


Trash Knight

by Odaigahara



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Body Horror, Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders Needs a Hug, Former Dark Side Anxiety | Virgil Sanders, Gen, Nightmares, Protective Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders, Sympathetic Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders, Sympathetic Deceit Sanders, Unsympathetic Deceit | Janus Sanders, Verbal Abuse, but not really
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:22:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21696589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Odaigahara/pseuds/Odaigahara
Summary: Remus sank out, dropping into his room like a sack of dismembered limbs and rolling over on his back on the floor. Something under him squelched. That, at least, was comforting."It's probably nothing," he said to his ceiling. He'd painted it in every condiment of the rainbow the other week, ketchup and mustard and mayonnaise dripping rancid from his ceiling fan for days; they formed a jagged clown's smile, red-nosed and yellow-eyed, toothlessly grinning. "Right, temporary murderclown? He's just stressed. Needs to jerk off or something. It's nothing to do withme."*Deceit's acting weird. Remus gets kicked out. Virgil and the Light Sides do their best to piece things together.
Relationships: Anxiety | Virgil Sanders & Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders & Deceit Sanders, Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders & Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders, Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders & Deceit Sanders
Comments: 111
Kudos: 331
Collections: Sanders Sides





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Deceit starts acting strange.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for Remus being Remus, bc this is his POV and we all know what that entails.

It started with Deceit in the dark kitchen at four in the morning, rooting through the fridge like a creepy little possessed girl and stuffing raw meat into his mouth. Remus stared at him for a long moment, lost for words because he honestly thought he was hallucinating; then Deceit jerked back from the open door with ground beef dripping from his mouth and vanished. Remus blinked. Then he went to the fridge and tried the raw ground beef himself, swishing it around in his mouth to get the full flavor profile. "Bloody," he said to himself, approvingly. Deceit must have gone a little more reptilian lately. Maybe Remus could corner him later to ask if he had two dicks now. 

"So do you have two dicks now?" Remus asked a couple of hours later at breakfast, because patience was a virtue and he was anything but virtuous. "Can I _see _if you have two dicks? Does that mean you'll have four _balls-"_

Deceit groaned and put down his spoon so he could facepalm. "It's totally not too early for this," he said, rubbing his eyes. He had bags under his eyes like he was trying to copy Virgil's aesthetic, and his scales seemed faded, not so bright, like they'd been dehydrated or something. "_What _makes you think I've suddenly changed my anatomy?"

"Mostly the meat thing," Remus answered cheerfully, but instead of getting pissy and defensive, Deceit just got confused. His eyebrows bunched together and his eyes went faint, focus going inwards like he was searching through a mind palace. Remus loved watching Deceit's expressions change based on what he'd said. Deceit always paid so much attention to him, always gave the _best _reactions. 

This wasn't the reaction he'd expected, though. "You know, with the blood and the violence? And the sex, can't forget that. Hours of backbreaking _fuckbuddy Olympics-" _Deceit finally gave up thinking and huffed, rolling his eyes.

"That all sounds reasonable. Tell me, Remus, if we'd had hours of backbreaking sex, how-"

"Would I be walking?"

"Would you _not know_ how many dicks I have?"

"It could be a recent change," Remus said brightly, but inside he was focused, intent like a pedophile outside an elementary school. Ready to snatch at the first vulnerability. Except here the vulnerability was how Deceit apparently didn't remember the night before at all, and had forgotten it enough that he thought Remus was rambling for no reason like he sometimes did. As opposed to being an unaccompanied child. Deceit was _nothing _like an unaccompanied child. "I think you're safe from pedophiles, by the way."

Deceit looked down at his imaginary adult body and deadpanned, "Really? That takes such a weight off my mind."

"I just thought I'd let you know," Remus said, magnanimous. He threw an arm over Deceit's shoulders and felt him stiffen, before forcibly relaxing. Only one second of flinching, and then- what? Resignation? Acceptance? Blinding terror? "Something _wrong, _DeeDee? Wanna go to my room and burn plastic for a couple hours?"

Deceit shrugged him off, pinching his lips shut and turning away. "I definitely don't have other things I'd rather be doing," he said warningly. The line of his back was tense, like a rattlesnake rearing back to scare off a predator. Something in Remus' chest twisted.

"Well, if you insist," he agreed, taking a step back. Deceit still didn't relax. "You know where to find me! I might even be wearing clothes this time."

"I look forward to finding out," Deceit said sardonically, but it was less indulgent sarcasm and more, more- Remus didn't have a word for it. He didn't _like_ the words for it. 

He sank out, dropping into his room like a sack of dismembered limbs and rolling over on his back on the floor. Something under him squelched. That, at least, was comforting. 

"It's probably nothing," Remus said to his ceiling. He'd painted it in every condiment of the rainbow the other week, ketchup and mustard and mayonnaise dripping rancid from his ceiling fan for _days; _they formed a jagged clown's smile, red-nosed and yellow-eyed, toothlessly grinning. "Right, temporary murderclown? He's just stressed. Needs to jerk off or something. It's nothing to do with _me_."

A downside of Remus' existence was how hard it was to lie to himself. He could tell what thoughts ran through his head, so there was no point trying to filter them out where he couldn't hear them. There was a whole molesting church chorus in his head going, _he hates you, you scare him, he never was your friend, _and not even thinking about spontaneous combustion or tightrope walkers falling to their deaths could shut them up. "It might not have to do with me," he amended. Murderclown sneered down at him, crying mustard from his eyes. Remus could see trails of imaginary ants picking up blobs of ketchup and wandering off with them in little imperialist troops down the walls. "Good morning, Ant Vietnam," he cheered to himself, a little forlorn. "We got you for the ant draft, but you're ant gay so we're gonna kill you with friendly fire! And literal fire. Lots of napalm today. We've slaughtered all _sorts_ of ant civilians."

Did ants have civilians? Or did they all fight? Did they get scared of their friends and have psychotic breaks that led to sleepwalking and eating raw meat at four in the morning? 

... Could an ant have a psychotic break? "I don't want him to stop being friendly," Remus confided. Murderclown did not respond. "We get along so well! I make weird jokes and he's sarcastic. What could be better?"

Wait. He knew the answer to that one. _Virgil _could be better, because then they'd have a straight (gay!) man to their weirdness. But Virgil got scared of every little thing, and he wanted softness and pillows and warm hugs_, _and Deceit was cold-blooded so warm hugs were right out. Plus, Remus had eaten their last pillow months ago. He liked the way the stuffing felt going down his throat. 

Absentmindedly, he conjured another pillow and tore it open with his teeth, chewing thoughtfully. Duck flavored. How _traditional. _What would Virgil do in this situation? He could always go up and ask him, since they weren't really on _bad terms _anymore, even though they played it up in the videos, but the last time he'd popped into Virgil's room uninvited had involved a lot of screaming. Remus still wasn't sure why. It wasn't like they hadn't seen each other naked before, and he'd jumped out of the shower as soon as he'd popped up in it! Virgil hadn't _had_ to break his nose with the shower head. It'd been fun, though. Ten out of ten would get injured again. 

He swallowed some feathers. Seemed like a dumb thing to bother Virgil over. Maybe Logan, he was no fun until he was a _lot _of fun, and Remus just had to find the right buttons to set him off, but. He only had one weird thing, right? And then normal things, or at least normal for him. One weird thing was happenstance, and twice was coincidence. Maybe if he observed _three_ weird things, he could share with the class. Poison the class. Burn down the school with the thermals in the gym! _Those _were bombs.

Maybe he could make a bomb and give it to Deceit as an apology. _Sorry for freaking you out! It'll totally happen again. _Yes. Perfect. Remus was amazing at this. 

Except he couldn't think of anything Dee would really do with a bomb. Put it on his nightstand like a really gory alarm clock? Ship it to Patton in a package with a pretty little bow? Use it in a play for extra suspense? Ooh, and then they could use method acting to disarm the bomb on stage, except if they failed they'd _die!_

And they'd explode in a shockwave of force, red-yellow sunbursts melting skin and charring bone, burning the theatre to _ash!_

_Now_ Remus knew the best way to get his mind off Dee's weirdo behavior. He waved a hand at one of his walls, wiping it clean of grime and old color; then he summoned a rainbow of acrylic paint tubes and got to work. 

An hour in, he ate one of his paintbrushes, licked his fingers clean, and grinned at what he had so far. Layers of yellow-orange-red in the background and ribbons of fire, hints of a stage- and in the foreground of the mural, lovingly outlined, were six figures. He set to work on them next.

Morality was the first one who got to have details! His pale skin was scorched dark and peeling, eyes miraculously intact, rolled back in his head to display only the whites; Remus lovingly painted his twisted, half-melted glasses, then started on the figure on top of him. This one was Virgil, because he liked Morality and got along with him. Remus figured in an explosion he would've tried to get close and shield him, since he was protective like that. Not that it would've helped, but the effort was something Remus could appreciate. He painted Virgil all in black and molten orange, corpse still smoldering; his face was slumped in Morality's shoulder, arms limp where they cradled him. 

Roman was on his back, closest to the blast, face blasted off and unrecognizable. The bottom half of his body was missing. Remus would've been close to the explosion, too, so he put his legs next to Roman, all mangled and bloody so together they made one person. Beside them was Logan's ruined corpse, alone on the ground with his head in his arms. 

Farthest away from them all was Dee, head bowed and fingers clawing at his hair. His image was curled in on itself, wracked with grief. 

Remus spent nearly two hours on _his_ image: on the folds of his cape, weakly burning; on the stricken horror in his posture; on the hot flickering backdrop of flames and destruction. He spent another hour perfecting the interplay of light and shadow across his body.

Self-preservation, failing his ultimate role. Alone and sobbing, unharmed- maybe he'd been the first to notice, the first to run, but they hadn't believed him because he always lied. He'd lost everything because of Remus' gift. Because he'd trusted Remus not to be destructive. Trusted him not to _ruin_ everything he touched. 

"Well _that_ got dark," Remus said to himself gleefully. He smudged a corner of the painting to make it imperfect. Ha! Ruin that. But no one could, because _Remus_ had ruined it first! That almost sounded like a metaphor for his life or something. Now he was a _real_ artist.

He stood up and stretched, cracking all his joints like popcorn. He plucked a stick of deodorant out of his collection and took a bite, then wondered aloud, "When _did_ I last eat?" It was a question that Dee made him ask himself every day or so. When did he last eat? When did he last drink a liquid that wasn't a body fluid, and yes, saliva _totally_ counted, _that _made sense.

He didn't bother cleaning the paint off his hands as he stepped out into the hallway, dragging his fingers along the walls to make abstract hallway art. He jumped all the stairs on impulse, giggling wildly, then made his way to the kitchen. No Deceit eating raw beef this time, but all the lights were off and the TV was silent. Must've been twelve hours at least since breakfast. Remus wondered where Dee was. He was usually a night owl! A night snake. A _nake. _Or, hmm, maybe not. That sounded kinda like a slur.

Remus grabbed a couple of random food items, slathered them in ketchup, and devoured them in a marvelous tomato orgy of violence. Then he licked his lips and went to go knock on Deceit's door until he either opened it or yelled at Remus to go away. 

_Shave and a haircut, _that one was first. Next was _S-O-S, _banging his forehead against the door, and a percussive cover of the Super Mario Brothers Underground theme, except without actual notes it just sounded like hitting the door a lot of times really fast. 

No response. Remus turned and slumped against the door, that same twisty feeling constricting his chest. Dee hadn't even told him to go away. 

He could be in the bathroom with his wrists slit, or maybe he'd fallen and couldn't get up, or was fast asleep after taking a bunch of _illegal drugs. _He could be holding himself quiet and still, eyes wide and unblinking as he stared at the door and waited for Remus to- to keep yelling. To keep trying to get his attention, too graphic too handsy too _much, _wondering whether Remus would break in. Break in and hurt him, make him pay attention and what if Deceit was keeping quiet so Remus thought he was away? What if he was pale, breathing shallow like Virgil in a panic attack, _dead certain _that Remus was going to hurt him, or harass him or- and what if Remus did? He could think about it so it could happen, right, like jumping out of a moving car could happen. What if Dee had always been lying about being his friend and liking his company and Remus was only noticing now, too thick-skulled and _dangerous _for anyone to have told directly?

Maybe Dee blamed him for Virgil leaving. Maybe he thought Virgil would've stayed with them if it weren't for Remus and he was thinking of how to leave next, except unlike Virgil he _wouldn't_ still hang out with them sometimes, would just disappear and leave Remus all alone and stay with Virgil with the others because Virgil only ever came down to see Dee anyway, right? _Right? _

"I'm _totally _freaking out," Remus admitted to himself in a whisper, and proceeded to gnaw his fingernails to the bone. 

*

By the next day, Remus had come up with a plan. It was a good plan! He was proud of it. All he'd have to do was keep his distance from Deceit for a few days, which meant no touching and no weird comments. Or less weird comments. He was basically made of weird comments, so getting rid of them completely wouldn't work out. Then he could see if Deceit got calmer and less worried, and change his behavior accordingly. Gathering empirical evidence, as Logan called it. 

_Ugh. _Usually Remus hated Logan's insufferable insistence on objective reasoning and minimizing his perfectly sensible suggestions- Thomas _could _kill his brother! Why not?- but his methods might be useful in this case. 

Remus only showed up at breakfast to grab some random shit out of the fridge, wave at Dee, and abscond to fuck around in his room some more. Deceit didn't really acknowledge him except to thin his lips a little and look away; Remus decided to spend a little less time around him than he'd planned.

He crafted some magnificent thoughts to send to Thomas, like what if he ran over pedestrians at a stoplight or punched Joan in the face. He could do it. None of his friends would expect it. He felt Thomas wince guiltily at the notion and grinned even more when he felt a touch of anger from Virgil. That was the mental version of _fuck off- very _familiar to Remus. If Virgil really wanted him to stop, though, he'd have to come confront him in person. Then Remus could point him at Dee and stand back. 

He lost focus, though, as the day wore on- sent less thoughts, or didn't send anything disturbing at all. His mind kept wandering to Deceit downstairs. What was he doing? Watching TV? Staging an elaborate debate? Fighting invisible enemies sent by a rival wizard to eat his flesh from _bone? _

He squirmed in place and gave in to impulse. It wasn't messing up the experiment if he _looked _at Dee, right? Not like he'd be harassing him if he made sure he knew where he was. Remus sank out of his room and appeared in the kitchen, got distracted by chocolate in the pantry, ate a bunch of chocolate including the wrappers- it was the same color as _shit, haha-_ and glanced around to see if the other Side was anywhere nearby.

The living room was empty. "_That's_ unusual," Remus said out loud, then appeared upstairs and blinked at Deceit's door. It was open just a crack, entirely unlocked, and when he nudged the door open, he saw that it was empty, too. 

Must've been visiting the Light Side again. Remus resisted the urge to pop up and see for himself and went back to his room to sulk.

He wouldn't have come out again at all, just spent the day lying on his back bored out of his mind, if he hadn't heard the thump in the hallway. It sent his heart going fast- something happening!- and he flipped to his feet, creeping toward the door with morbid excitement bubbling in his chest. Maybe it was a Light Side come to play, or Virgil, or Deceit back from wherever he was-

Remus made a peephole in the door and peered out, grinning with all his teeth when he spied Deceit stomping down the hallway. His hat was pulled low over his head, cape swirling behind him like it did when he was _really _pissed. He wasn't grumbling under his breath, though, or clenching his fists. Instead, he was- he was-

Something squeezed Remus' lungs. He stood up straighter. 

Dee was _limping,_ and trying to be quiet about it. Now, why oh why would he want to do that? He could be scared of Remus. Could be frightened that he'd make it worse, or that he'd irritate him into aggravating the wound himself- but Remus didn't give him the limp. Remus wasn't the reason Dee was bleeding, and he _was_ bleeding, because he'd just passed the door and Remus could _smell _it. 

An accidental injury would be bandaged already. Virgil would have noticed immediately, the chronically worried _bastard_. He would've made Dee sit still until he fixed it, or gotten one of the Light Sides to do first aid. So it wasn't an accident, or at least not something that had happened around the other Sides. 

Deceit was heading for the stairs; Remus banished his door and followed him, not bothering with the laws of physics and dropping through the floor to the kitchen. Their best first aid kit was in one of the cabinets, Remus knew, because he'd eaten all the antibacterial gel in it a long time ago. He lugged it out of the cabinet and sat in one of the chairs with it in his lap, then opened it to browse for snacks. 

Deceit's face when he walked into the kitchen was priceless. "Looking for this?" Remus asked, pulling a roll of bandages loose. "Dunno what it'll do for your leg, but maybe we can amputate! Not like snakes have legs _anyway_."

Deceit's expression darkened. "Give me the first aid kit, Remus."

"Don't you mean I _shouldn't_ give you the kit?" Remus asked brightly. "Honestly, DeeDee, it sounds like you're telling me to keep it."

The other Side looked ready to spit fire. "You know what I-" Remus tossed him an ice pack, and he shot out one of his other arms to catch it, obviously surprised. 

"Ice first, for a sprain, right? Then heat. Otherwise there's swelling." Remus leaned in closer. "Like your ankle has an _erection."_

"Just the mental image I needed," Dee said sourly, but he put his foot up onto the chair next to Remus and rolled up the hem of his pants. Remus raised his eyebrows. 

"That's a _hell _of a sprain! All purple and shit. What'd you _do_?" Dee's ankle looked like it had vored a tennis ball, and the whole side of his calf was splattered sunset colors, scraped raw. Remus had seen Dee wince when he put enough weight on it to lean on the chair in the first place. "Should you even be walking?"

"Is that even any of your _business?"_ Dee snarled, lips drawing back to show fang. Remus blinked; usually Dee didn't bother having that much of a snakeface. 

"What's got _you_ in a twist? I'm only asking an innocent question. Like do you want your leg to stop working, 'cause that's what's gonna happen if you keep walking on it like that. Not that I'd judge you if you wanted to cut it off outright! Especially not if you gave it to me. Are you going to give me your leg, DeeDee?"

Deceit glared poison and snatched his foot away, going pale in the second before he lowered it to the ground. Ouch, harsh motion. Too bad he wasn't listening to Remus! He grabbed the ice pack and hissed from deep in his throat. "Are you going to stop asking _stupid questions? _I can totally imagine why you seem to think I'm an incompetent."

"Probably has something to do with how you're acting like one," Remus suggested, reaching out to boop Dee's nose. Deceit recoiled. "I'm just being a good friend! _Patton_ would approve."

Deceit drew himself up, still pale and clenching his fists. His scowl was hot and hateful. "You really think," he started, low, and one of his hands twitched, jerking up to his side and then down again, "that I consider you a _friend?"_

The twisty thing in Remus' chest reappeared to tighten its hold. "Of course I do. We've _always_ been friends. You and me and Virgil, right? Except... less Virgil now." 

Deceit curled back his lips. "Don't be _absurd,"_ he said darkly. "You're a burden on Thomas and a burden on me. I can't preserve Thomas' welfare if he's constantly being exhorted to jump out of cars or pursue whatever inane urges pop into your little mind. The only reason you're still around is because Thomas hasn't found a way to _exorcize_ you completely- and the only reason I let you hang around _me_ is because someone has to deal with your nonsense. But I think I'm getting _bored_ with that."

Remus couldn't answer. A heavy blackness was descending on him, choking like seaweed and slime; it crowded into his lungs and filled his throat with wet, monstrous tendrils, flooded him with murky infested water. Was this what drowning felt like? Like every cell in your body was bursting and dying all at once, in a billion futile screams? But they were friends, Dee _said_ they were friends, everyone else said they were- 

But Dee _lied_-

But he didn't sound like he was lying now. He sounded like when he staged arguments in his room, all fire and wicked brimstone certainty, grinning with his snake eye all ablaze. And earlier Remus had touched him and he'd frozen, and now Remus was harassing him in the kitchen while he was _hurt _and, and booping him without permission and talking to him and getting his _filth _all over the walls and he knew the Light Sides didn't always like it when he made a mess but Deceit had never minded, he _hadn't, _they were _friends _except apparently they _weren't! _"Dee, I-"

His hand slapped over his mouth and stayed there without his permission. Deceit's face twisted. "I'm not done talking, _Duke. _I said I'm bored of you. I'm tired of playing happy families with an idiot who thinks with his dick instead of his brain and thinks violence solves every problem. I'm tired of having to hear your inane prattle-" Remus flinched- "of having to deal with you _touching _me-" But, but- "and of having to _live _in the same place as someone who thinks of _junkyards_ as _homey!" _

_But you never minded before_, Remus wanted to say, but he couldn't make his hand move at all, couldn't force his mouth to form words. The weeds had smothered every sound he could make. Dee sneered. "I can't believe you thought I was your friend. Even the _prince _doesn't tolerate you, and you're supposed to be his _brother. _Why in the world would I have ever wanted you around?" His lips contorted into a smile. "In fact? I _don't_ want you around. I don't think you should even qualify as a Dark Side. I think you should _leave."_

Remus stared. Leave? And go _where?_ He wasn't a Light Side. He didn't have any place to go, except maybe the Subconscious, and no one was supposed to go there. Even Remus didn't stay there for long. He grabbed his hand and fought it down, slamming it against the counter and holding it there. It didn't make talking any easier. "But I haven't done anything _wrong," _he forced out.

"Oh, please," Deceit said with a roll of his eyes. "You think _that_ matters? Your existence is wrong. Your _presence_ is wrong. I don't need to point to any specific examples because they're all around us!" He waved an arm at the smears of paint on the walls and the dismembered first aid kit, the chipped cabinets and broken microwave. Remus had taken it apart to see what it looked like inside. "Everything you touch, you destroy. There's no benefit to your presence. Keeping you around at this point isn't beneficial. I know you're not one for sense, but _surely_ you can understand _that_ much. I _don't want you around. _Get out before I make you leave by _force_."

Remus couldn't breathe. He couldn't, like the room was full of poison gas and it was making him hallucinate because this couldn't be real, wouldn't he have been able to tell if something like this had been real? If Dee had never been his friend, like Virgil hadn't because he'd left, like the others weren't really because they only tolerated him and all he had was Dee until he _didn't and never had- _

"Well?" Dee demanded, and Remus got to his feet, letting the first aid kit crash to the floor. His hands were shaking. Now why in the world would they be doing that? "I'm _waiting_." And he gestured at the front door like, what, Remus was just supposed to walk out and let the Subconscious take him? Hope it didn't chew him up too bad before it spit him out?

Let it chew him up. He didn't care. Maybe it could get rid of the weeds. Remus moved shakily over to the front door, glancing back in case Dee changed his mind. In case he laughed that howling laugh that came out whenever he tricked someone, grinning all smug and satisfied, and said _really, Remus, you believed any of that? I don't know what I'm going to do with you. _In case he said he was Remus' friend after all. But he didn't. He only looked bored and impatient, like a kid waiting for a magic trick, and waved a hand like Remus should be gone already.

Out of sight, out of mind. Dee didn't even want to _see_ him. "I guess my painting was wrong," Remus said weakly, stalling for one last second so Dee might say_ never mind, get back here, it's okay. I'm a liar. You know I didn't mean it. _

"_What_ are you babbling about _now_," Deceit demanded instead, and the seaweed crushed one of Remus' lungs. 

_You wouldn't actually cry if I died, _Remus meant to say_, _but what came out was, "Nothing. I guess I'm going now."

"Don't wait up," Deceit said snottily, already turning away; Remus stared at his back, black water strangling his lungs, and finally yanked open the door and ran.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Remus is in the Subconscious, and Virgil is straight up not having a good time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW at end notes. Most of them, predictably, are to do with Remus.
> 
> Also, I posted this at 1:30 in the morning for some godforsaken reason, so if it's a little different later, it's because I've edited it. Any edits will be for flow and will not affect the plot.

Remus stood on rain-slicked black pebbles, staring out at an ocean in the midst of a storm. The transition from carpet to beach had been instantaneous; in no time at all his hair was flattened to his skull, his clothing soaked to his skin. Wind cut at his eyes and face, and the sky boiled with dark clouds.

He tried to breathe and inhaled only water. Dee's words rang in his head: _I don't want you around. __Get out before I make you leave by force-_

He spun around, but the door had already disappeared. He stood staring at where it had been, trembling faintly and not knowing why. So Deceit had kicked him out. Hadn't be been kicked out before? Hadn't he been unwanted in the past? Sure, things were different now that Thomas was an adult, but the teenage years had been _hard. _Sometimes literally! There had been a lot of masturbation, was what he meant by that. 

This wasn't the first time Remus had been told he wasn't welcome. He shouldn't- he should've been _fine, _and look, now he had the Subconscious all to himself and could do whatever he wanted. Who would stop him? He could make a landscape composed entirely of dicks. He could make himself godking of a whole empire of trash people, not a cliche to be seen, only fantastical horrors better than that asshole Lovecraft had ever imagined, because unlike Lovecraft Remus didn't see Italians and cephalopods as the greatest evils ever to walk the planet. And Thomas would _never_ be able to escape his influence, because it would always bubble up in the back of his mind and affect his actions from the shadows!

Remus should have done this years ago. The only reason he hadn't was because Dee had told him not to. It would tear him apart, he'd said. So many uncontrolled impulses from the back of Thomas' mind, so far from his conscious control or understanding- he could be ripped to pieces at once if he wasn't careful. He wouldn't be able to speak to Thomas directly at all. If enough time went by, he would stop even being a Side.

That sounded good to Remus. Who needed to be a Side? Who needed a physical form, or touch, or conversation or smiles or friends who made fun of all the gore in stupid horror movies with you? Who needed weird Christmas traditions, sarcastic banter, glittering mismatched eyes that brightened when he laughed- _fuck_. Focus on the pebbles and how they look like deer pellets. Maybe he could eat them, filling his belly with rocks like in the bloody version of Red Riding Hood, and weigh himself down so he could step into the water to _sink. _Then he wouldn't have to think about any of this ever again.

Remus stooped to grab a handful of pebbles and shoved them in his mouth, swallowing them like an oviposition kinkster chugging silicon eggs. He didn't gag as they sank into his stomach. He didn't even stop until he started feeling nauseous, which he _never _felt, and then he choked out a laugh, doubling over and coughing out blood and bits of flesh. They glistened on the wet rocky shore like misshapen rubies.

God, Remus loved blood. He could tear off pieces of himself without the Subconscious helping, thank you very much. He could revel in the visceral glee of breaking one of society's earliest taboos. _Don't chew your nails, __don't pick at your skin, don't touch that knife or you'll hurt yourself, _Thomas' parents had chided_, _but what did they know? All the best stories used blood for audience appeal. Once Thomas had watched a horror movie and pressed a hand to his mouth, choked, as a woman was disemboweled onscreen. The monster had reached a hand down her throat and pulled her intestines out from her _mouth_, and hadn't that been unforgettable? Hadn't that seared into his mind, taunting him every waking moment until Virgil had busted Remus' door down and snarled _would you stop that, you asshole- Jesus Christ are you actually disemboweling yourself what the _fuck_-_

Virgil had gone pale and twitchy, scared and trying to hide it, and he'd called Deceit because that was who they called, when they thought something was wrong. They'd call DeeDee, and he'd tell them they were idiots who could deal with this themselves when the solution was obvious, and when it _wasn't, _he'd thin his lips and get to work.

Deceit had taken one look at the bloody mess of digestive system that was Remus, all inside-out like a freakier version of the Human Centipede, and rolled his eyes. He'd pulled on rubber gloves like a doctor prepping for a prostate exam, had told Virgil to leave and make sure Thomas didn't do anything stupid while they were busy, and then he'd gathered up Remus' insides like he was corralling a couple of pythons and told him to open up. _Please do think you're getting out of helping me with this,_ he'd said, almost amused. _You have your arms free. It _doesn't_ confound me how you got into this mess in the first place, it's not as if you couldn't have shoved them back in yourself-_

Remus hadn't, though. He hadn't thought of it, had only stared at the ceiling and spiraled into thoughts of more blood, more murder, all the ways Thomas could take a knife and drive it through his stomach, yank it across to let the half-digested food go spilling out. He'd been lying there for hours after he'd finally figured out how to replicate the scene from the movie. Until Virgil had come in to yell at him, he hadn't been able to think about cleaning up his mess at all.

Deceit hadn't been mad, though. He'd just rolled his eyes again at Remus' shrug and tilted his head back, pushing the organs back in between his teeth and shaking Remus' shoulders like he wanted to make sure they settled back in place. Remus had grinned at him when he was finished, bloody all down his front- had thanked him and said _something_, fuck if he remembered _what_\- and Deceit had thrown back his head and laughed, completely undignified.

_I hate you, _he'd said, still giggling and unfathomably fond, _I do. I really, really do. Every day I dream of what life would be like without you, you _horrible _Side, every moment with you is an imposition- _and he'd grinned right back at Remus, bright and blood-spattered, the human half of his face pink and the scaled half glittering like peridots.

Funny, now that Remus thought of it. Turned out DeeDee had been telling the truth after all. That- had to be a record or _something_, right, wasn't every day that the embodiment of lies said something sincere-

Remus' bloated stomach turned, and he decided that he didn't want to hang around anymore. He felt dizzy, weighed-down and drowning, the monster of the story sent away to rot, and with stones in his belly he'd never float up to the surface. He'd sink and sink as his bloated body decomposed, and someday a commercial fisherman would dredge up his rotting foot and call a local news station! Or an alligator would eat him. In Florida that was always a possibility.

Better make it a possibility sooner. He stepped into the cold waves and waded until the sand dipped out from below him. Just depths, after that! Depths and jellyfish and glimmers of seagrass, like glittering peridot scales-

But Remus was good at planning; he didn't have time to dwell on the reminder and feel the weeds clog up his lungs, because the water was already flooding his mouth.

He sank like a stone.

*

When Virgil slept, he dreamed.

Everyone did, as far as he knew- even Logan, who regarded dreams much like a master programmer confronted with some noob's first attempts at Matlab. _They're useful enough, _he'd conceded the one time they'd discussed the subject, _but as a mechanism for sorting through Thomas' perceptions of day-to-day life, I am far superior. _That had set off a whole argument with Princey, who'd been offended at the concept of his imaginative kingdom being anything less than perfect for everything- but whatever, that wasn't the point. Those were _Thomas' _dreams, which all of them were aware of to some extent.

The Sides' dreams were different.

Virgil hadn't exactly surveyed everyone or anything, since that was too much work and also embarrassing as shit, but he was pretty sure their dreams were directly tied to their functions. Roman bragged about lucid dreaming sometimes, where he fell under some kind of sleep-whammy and got completely immersed into a story with no inkling of his previous life, a revelation that'd had the lovely side effect of making Virgil afraid that one day Roman would wake up and lose his memories completely; Logan, meanwhile, had once mentioned that he used his dreams as a filing system, sorting through his thoughts in an orderly and uninterrupted fashion. Virgil wasn't sure that was completely accurate, if only because he'd felt Logan's fear spike a couple of times in his room, but if Logan had bad dreams Virgil knew he'd never admit it. So, filing system, sure. That made sense.

For Virgil and Patton, though, things were different. They were the instincts to love and be afraid, some of the earliest parts of Thomas' conscious mind to develop. When they slept, they tapped into Thomas' subconscious mind, and neither of them had any control over their dreams at all. Half the time they just had random jumbles of nightmares and childhood memories, with no relevance to their day-to-day life at all.

So Virgil was understandably confused when he found himself in a long, dark hallway, surrounded by mirrors and staring at Deceit's back. The other Side's shoulders were tense and straight, upright in a way that made him look more defensive than credible, and the rim of his bowler hat was pulled low over his face. Virgil waited for something to happen, wondering if he was about to speak or what, but the two of them only stood there; he couldn't tell if Dream-Deceit knew he was there in the first place.

After a long few minutes of silence, Deceit started to walk away, striding around the corner to disappear, and Virgil ran after him. His reflection flashed by in the corner of his eye, monstrous and strange, but he couldn't turn his head to look at it. The dream would only let him run.

The hallway finally bowed out into a long, low-ceilinged chamber that Virgil had to duck his head to enter. There were no lights along the walls, but Virgil could see well enough regardless- perks of being a former Dark Side, probably, or maybe just weird dream bullshit. He stepped further into the chamber until he caught sight of a silhouette in the far corner: Deceit, shadowed and unmoving, waiting patiently for him to approach.

Virgil came closer, but Deceit's face stayed hidden, shaded by the rim of his hat. "I never expected to see _you_ again," the other Side said casually, like this was a perfectly normal place for them to meet. "Didn't you hear me tell you to leave?"

"I don't understand why I had to," Virgil said, choked. The words came at him from a long way off, like he was reading them off a screen. "I don't know what I did _wrong_." His chest felt tight, like his lungs wouldn't inflate. He looked down to see pondweed sprouting from his torso, writhing and curling around his arms like tentacles, and terror stabbed through him like lightning, but it didn't matter. He wasn't in control of the dream. No matter how he struggled, his hands wouldn't move to rip them out.

The weeds tightened around Virgil's chest, constricting his ribs until he was sure they would break under the strain. He wheezed, doubling over, but Deceit didn't react. All he did was tilt his head, spilling light across his face that set his scales glittering like precious jewels. Virgil choked in horror at the sight of him.

The human half of Deceit was bruised and broken, gashed in ugly blues and purples, and the snake half was _wrong, _inhuman and blank with a pale unseeing eye. He smiled past the wounds, though, like he didn't even feel them, with the soft, indulgent expression he usually refused to wear on the grounds that sentimentality was socially-constructed bullshit. The expression cracked open the gash on his face and made it bleed, dribbling down his jaw and onto his clothes. He didn't react to that, either.

"Dee?" Virgil begged, sick with horror. He couldn't stop looking at Dee's _face, _at the bruises and the broken cheekbone that should never have had the chance to happen. Deceit was _Self-Preservation. _He'd never let something like this happen, no matter how secretive he preferred to be. Virgil would never let him. _What happened to you, _he wanted to ask- it was _all _he wanted to ask- but what came out was: "What's going on?"

"I'm frightened of you," Deceit said, terminally, unnaturally gentle. Virgil flinched, but behind the inevitable fear he was mostly confused. This had never been a worry of his. He'd always known that _Deceit _could keep him in line- he kept Remus in line, for fuck's sake. He'd never thought Deceit was afraid of _him_. "I just want you to leave me alone. You want so much of me."

What the _fuck_. Virgil stood transfixed by the dream, unable to struggle, and the pondweed twisted into the floor, into the walls, binding his wrists together and growing thorns. He could taste blood welling up in his mouth, could feel barbs digging into his lungs. What the fucking _fuck_, his dreams were never this detailed. His nightmares were all stupid shit like being chased by monsters or cast out by all his friends, not this bizarre plant catacomb with Deceit the domestic abuse victim-

Deceit gave him that same horribly gentle smile, interrupting his thoughts, and reached up to pry a scale from his face. It came loose in a spurt of blood, skin hanging off it, but Virgil's hands still came up to claim it when Deceit held it out. It was cool and heavy in his hand. Some kind of gemstone, Virgil thought distantly, as the rest of his mind was engulfed by horror. "I can't give you more," Deceit said softly. "But I'm afraid you'll _want_ more. It's your fault I sent you away, you see. None of this would have happened if it weren't for you."

Virgil's body jerked forward, arms struggling to raise against the plants pulling them down. The thorns dug into his skin and dragged at him. "But I don't _want_ to go," he pleaded, mouth moving without permission. "DeeDee, please, I- I can do better, I didn't mean to freak you out-"

"You ruin _everything_ you touch," Deceit said, colder now, and something in Virgil reeled at the blow. No, that wasn't- Thomas said he was useful, he'd _told him-_ "You've ruined me already. Get out before I _make _you," and his eyes glowed, a deep gold that was almost orange, nothing like his normal colors at all. "Get out. Get _out. Get out get out **get out ****GET OUT-"**_

The plants swelled to fill the room, tearing at them both, dragging more jewels from Deceit's face and cutting Virgil apart. He choked out a panicked scream, trying to squirm loose, but the weeds only pulled tighter and tighter, cutting off his breath completely. Virgil writhed and gasped, but he couldn't break free, he _couldn't,_ he was going to _die_, and when his hands closed around the cool handle he didn't even think. He only swung the weapon, so natural in his hands, to bash himself loose.

His weapon hit something soft, and Deceit screamed. Virgil faltered, freezing in place, and the other Side threw himself back against the wall, tears streaking his face. His side was bloody, shirt torn. He was holding up all six of his hands like he thought they could protect him. Cold realization seeped down Virgil's spine. God, no, he'd never- he'd _never, _not even after he'd defected, when they hadn't been friends, hurting Deceit hadn't even crossed his mind- "Dee?" Virgil tried, barely stifling a sob. "Fuck, no, I'm- I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, I'm so sorry-"

His body moved without his input, and he smashed the mace into Deceit's stomach. Deceit cried out, trying to curl up to protect his weak points, but Virgil stomped his shoulder, holding him down so the mace could break his ribs. He felt himself grin at Deceit's winded, gasping sobs and put a foot on his arm, then slammed the mace into each hand until he'd broken all thirty of his careful fingers. In his head he thrashed the whole time, trying to force himself awake, but he couldn't get out; all he could do was stay a passenger in his own body as Deceit stopped struggling, screams trailing off into choked, stifled whimpers. Self-preservation, Virgil realized with a well of nausea. If he went quiet, he might not provoke the person attacking him. He might be able to cooperate, to manipulate him, and this was the first time in the whole dream that Deceit had been at all like normal and it made Virgil want to _scream_-

"Please stop," Deceit rasped. "I'm not fighting you. You don't have to hurt me any more."

"I don't _want_ to hurt you," Virgil choked out, dropping the mace. "I never- you're my friend, Dee, of course I don't want to hurt you."

Deceit's head lolled, eyes going foggy and distant. "Liar," he breathed, weeds writhing into his mouth, and Virgil jerked awake and _screamed_.

His chest felt like it was on fire, heart beating so fast it made him dizzy and cold all at once, head shrieking to _run fight get away_ and god, no, he _couldn't_, not when he'd just- not when_-_

"Dee," he whispered, hugging himself under the covers. Stupid, obviously it was stupid, but if he could see he was okay, if he could know for sure it hadn't been real- "_Deceit_. The sky is green, my name isn't Virgil, I've always loved Veggie Tales, I wasn't the one who stole Roman's Lion King 2 poster of Kovu and his sister-" He choked, hyperventilating. It was only a nightmare. He didn't even _have _a mace. "Dee, c'mon, _please_."

No response. Virgil stared out at the darkness of his room, shadows writhing and deepening in the corners of his vision, and tried to slow his breathing. It was fine. Deceit was fine, just asleep like a normal person in the Dark Side, it was just a fucking _nightmare. _He closed his eyes and counted his inhales until the adrenaline faded and he stopped hearing Deceit's screaming in his head, but the terror was still there under his skin. He wasn't getting any rest until he sorted this out.

Virgil clenched his fists in his sheets. He didn't want to bother Patton this late, and Logan and Roman had been skipping bedtime for a few days now, so they'd probably just gotten to sleep after a few straight days of hardcore brainstorming. If he woke them up now, they might not go back to sleep before tomorrow. Virgil couldn't be that selfish over a nightmare, not when it really wasn't a big deal.

There was one other Side who might be awake, though, and who'd probably know how Deceit was doing. Virgil forced himself still and reached out, trying to concentrate enough to catch the other Side's attention. "Remus? Could really use your help right now, if you're up."

That was Remus' cue to pop up and make an erection joke- _I'm not the only thing that's up!-_ but he didn't appear. Virgil stared at the empty spot on the floor, terror ratcheting up another few inches. Remus never refused a summons. He loved being summoned, loved showboating and fucking with people, would appear even if he'd been asleep- "I had a pretty fucked-up dream," Virgil tried, raising his voice. "Thought you might wanna talk about how it could've been even bloodier."

Silence. Virgil steeled himself to sink into the Dark Side and confront whatever was wrong _himself, _but he came up against a barrier, solid like a closed door. "Are you blocking me out?" he demanded, but of course there was no answer, because Deceit was in the Dark Side with the door locked and Virgil couldn't contact _anyone. _What if he _had_ beaten him half to death? What if Deceit really was devolving into jewels and shit, what if the Dark Side had something terminally wrong with it, what if every part of Virgil's old home had become a nightmare out of the-

Oh.

Virgil's mind raced. It was so stupidly obvious, Logan would've figured it out in a second. The _Subconscious. _Someplace that leaked into his and Patton's dreams, a place that was affected by any Side who went into it, and in the dream he'd been carrying a _mace, _hadn't he? There was only one Side in the Mindscape who wielded one of those.

Virgil had dreamed he was _Remus_. Virgil's dreams were connected to the Subconscious. Remus had been begging to know why Deceit had told him to leave, and now neither of them was answering summons and Virgil couldn't get into the Dark Side at _all_-

Right, okay, that was it. He wasn't about to wake everyone up at three in the morning over what might still turn out to be nothing, but he'd be a negligent Anxiety if he didn't at least sort of sound the alarm. The time for panicking in his room was over.

Virgil stepped into the hallway, took a deep breath, and went to knock on Roman's door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: contemplation/flashbacks to extreme gore such as disembowelment, a nightmare that involves beating a loved one, self-mutilation, something close to a suicide attempt, mentions of oviposition kink and masturbation, eating things that are not food, plant-based body horror, implied sort-of drowning, mention of domestic abuse.
> 
> Jesus _Christ_. I swear this isn't quite as dark as it's sounding here, half of this stuff is in a nightmare.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here be dragons.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW at end of chapter.

"_Excuse_ me?"

Virgil growled, resisting the urge to shove past Roman and traipse into the Imagination himself. Only two things stopped him: barely restrained terror, and the human disease called friendship. Not to mention how Princey had already brought out his sword. "The Duke- you know, your _brother_, the Luigi to your prissy Mario- is in the Subconscious. We need to get him out."

Roman wrinkled his nose. "I'm not _prissy,"_ he said, sounding more muzzy than offended. He brought his hands up to rub his eyes and nearly brained himself with his sword; Virgil had to snatch it out of his hands before he hurt himself. Then he pushed past him into the bedroom, because why the fuck not, they were on a time limit anyway.

As always, the fairy lights and general whimsy of Roman's room taunted him. Passing the threshold felt like getting caught in a hellish, fantastical field of radiation, even though its actual effects varied. Would he start daydreaming uncontrollably? Would they all start speaking in rhyme? No one knew, especially not Virgil.

"Hey! You can't just barge in here and say something like that!" The katana disappeared from Virgil's grip, and Roman appeared in front of him, arms crossed. He would've been more menacing without the bedhead. "What even makes you think he's there? Deceit might be a slimy, untrustworthy snake_, _but he's not stupid. He wouldn't let Remus go running off like that."

"Oh, wow, and you'd know? Since you've spent so much _time_ with him?"

"I'll have you know that we've gone on a number of excursions to my illustrious kingdom in the past few months! He may be a silver-tongued trickster with a heart of lead and no heroic conscience to speak of, but he's very pleasant company."

"Yeah, well, I think something's wrong with _him_, too. He's not letting me into the other side anymore."

"Well, you aren't a Dark Side anymore," Roman said reasonably. Thank you, Captain Obvious! Virgil hadn't _noticed_. "Perhaps he wants a little privacy."

"He's never blocked me off _before,"_ Virgil argued. "Also, in case it slipped your mind, Remus is getting torn apart as we speak, because he's _in the Subconscious._" Or maybe he was already gone and Virgil's nightmare had been the aftereffects, maybe he was too late and he'd _failed _and none of them would ever wake up to a weirdo chewing deodorant above their beds and popping into their showers to ask opinions on snuff films again, maybe Remus had died in agony- "I've never had a nightmare like tonight. Not _once_. And I have nightmares all the time."

"That's- very concerning, actually, but surely we would have noticed? Even _if_ something were wrong, surely he'd come here first."

"His mind is basically a bag of rats," Virgil snapped. "He said himself that he doesn't have reasons for what he does. This entire conversation is meaningless, because Remus _didn't _come here, something's wrong with Deceit, and there's no other way to figure out what the hell is going on! _Let's get down to business-"_

_"To defeat! The thing!" _Roman finished, flickering into his usual outfit with a flourish of his wrist. He frowned. "Hm, not proud of that lyric, but in my defense there aren't many one-syllable words that fit the situation. You're certain we need to investigate? Should we not wake Logan and Patton, if the situation is so dire?"

"Do you want an adventure or not," Virgil gritted out, vibrating in place. He hated Roman's room_ so much, _could already feel the music welling up like internal bleeding inside him- "_Mystery, nervousness, I really hate singing, I swear to God, let's just go."_

"Is that from _Jekyll and Hyde: The Musical? _I didn't know you liked that production."

"The clock is _ticking!"_

"Fine, fine! Don't get your boxers in a twist, assuming you wear boxers, and incidentally please don't take this moment to show me-"

"I am _not_ the one you have to worry about for that-"

"_Whatever_, Vices And No Virtues! You're right, much as it pains me to admit it. If Remus insists on taking the role of the damsel, we will have to take the role of the knight! And the loyal sidekick."

"I'll be nice and let you carry my swords," Virgil said, and the look on Princey's face was enough to mollify the worst of his nerves.

Roman didn't actually bother to dress them in pointless fantasy clothes, which was the first sign Virgil had seen that he was taking this at all seriously. They stepped seamlessly into the Imagination, soft grass springing up under their feet. Dandelions dotted the field like an army of sunny pompoms. Virgil shoved his hands into his pockets and glared at a bumblebee that drifted too close. "So how do you get to the Subconscious from this side? We're not gonna have to dig a hole, are we? 'Cause I do not want to be buried alive. We have enough of a problem with getting buried under _deadlines _as it is."

"Ugh, don't remind me," Roman groaned. "And no, of course we're not digging a hole, do I look like a savage? I have a better way in. It's just, well. Something of a walk. A rather treacherous one." He sounded almost nervous.

The constant unease in Virgil's chest upgraded to dread. "Treacherous," he echoed. "Like... what, bandits?"

Roman bit his lip, turned his head away. His shoulders straightened. "The Imagination is not _entirely_ my domain," he said. "Or rather, it does in a sense belong to Remus and I, but we've had it for a very long time. When dreams coalesce between us, they sometimes take on a life of their own." He smiled ruefully, sword appearing in his hand. "Not every fight I'm involved in is, ah. Planned."

Virgil's heart skipped a beat. "You're talking about the Dragon Witch," he accused.

The Dragon Witch was the reason he never went on Roman and Remus' expeditions into their domain. An enemy they had to _physically fight- _who couldn't be reined in like another Side, couldn't materialize in the real world so Thomas could guilt them into stopping- Virgil couldn't imagine anything worse, except maybe someone forcing Thomas to give a last-minute speech. Remus had used to come back from his adventures with deep gouges across his chest, but Virgil had always written that off as Remus being weird; it hadn't been until Roman had returned with singed hair and an exhausted smile that he'd realized the injuries weren't on _purpose_. Now he had to stay up until whoever went into the Imagination came back out again, in case the Witch hurt them too badly.

Honestly, he didn't get why they went in at all_. _"You're saying we have to go into _her _territory?" he demanded. "I thought you had ways around it." Virgil would've had ways around it, if he'd been Creativity. One of the Creativities. Whatever. He'd put secret passages into Thomas' actual apartment if he could. You never knew when you'd need to make a quick escape. 

"She's the most long-lived construct here," Roman said, mouth twisting. "Not like _us, _of course, she's no more a part of Thomas than the monster in his closet-"

"Rude."

"You know what I mean! She's closer to his Subconscious than I am. I can't get to Remus' half without him here, so unfortunately she's the only option." Roman glanced up sharply. "You've never had the pleasure of her company, have you?"

"You know I don't go outside," Virgil said, trying for light. Roman didn't look at him; his eyes were focused on the distant trees, knuckles white around the hilt of his sword.

"With luck, we won't encounter her, but in case we do- is there any weapon you're proficient in? Anything you've picked up over the years?"

"What makes you think I'm proficient in anything? Thomas isn't exactly a martial artist."

Roman rounded on him. "You grew up with Remus, Doctor Gloom," he snapped. "You were a Dark Side, you're _fight or flight- _don't tell me you aren't good at _anything!"_ Virgil jerked back on reflex, lips drawing back. Roman sagged. "I'm sorry, I- I shouldn't shout. I know you're not required to know how to fight."

"Give me a knife, that'll probably work," Virgil said, veins running cold with adrenaline. "But I'm hiding behind you if she attacks us."

Roman gave him a crooked smile. Despite himself, Virgil smiled back.

They crept along the shadow of the treeline, Roman stiff and vigilant and Virgil lightening his footsteps to nothing. Time dilated, Roman cramming days of travel into a couple of hours. Fatigue sapped their strength. By the time they reached the base of the mountains, Roman's face was blotchy-pale. "Is this-"

"We're close to her lair," Roman murmured, shifting back on his feet. "Near the center, as it were." Virgil heard the unspoken addition, laced with Princey's fear: if the Dragon Witch was going to ambush them, she would do it here. The knife in his hand suddenly felt about as intimidating as a toothpick.

You could still kill someone with a toothpick, though. Thomas could trip and jab one into his eye, so far it hit his brain and _lobotomized _him, made him as good as dead- no, fuck, Virgil had to focus. Thomas wasn't the one in danger here. Not unless they couldn't get Remus back.

Roman motioned him forward, hunching low at the treeline. The ground bucked under Virgil's feet before he could follow him, and he crashed to the ground, heart bursting, tried to scramble to his feet-

_"Virgil!"_

A cold weight crushed him to the dirt. He thrashed, gasping for breath, but the weight didn't move; it was a giant claw, as big across as a car and just as heavy. Virgil groped for the dagger, but already knew it was useless. A knife couldn't pierce _this_ hide. The scales felt as hard as bone.

The creature above him regarded him with dangerously intelligent eyes and asked, low and sonorous, "Who might _this_ be? Not trespassers, when I've so kindly left you room to play." The Dragon Witch drew back her lips, exposing glistening teeth. Her scales were a bloody resplendent red, tapering lighter on the undersides of her wings, and her spiraling horns were deep purple, arching back from her skull. She was longer than the clearing and taller than the trees, and a single swipe of her claw could rend Virgil in half. He ran a frantic threat assessment and came back with _play dead. _Thanks, instincts, real _fucking_ helpful. "I can't imagine any reason why you would have come here, Prince," she continued, and Roman stiffened in the corner of Virgil's eye. "Unless it was to bring me this delicious snack? I do love when they squirm."

She'd come up from the earth, Virgil realized belatedly. She had her whole territory mapped out, could sense it like he sensed his room, she'd known about them the whole fucking _time_\- "Would you let go of me already?" he demanded, instincts screaming at him to beg for his life. "I didn't sign up for manhandling today, and your breath _smells_ like Insane Clown Posse _sounds_."

Roman made a noise at that, a choked sound like he didn't know whether to scream or cry, and Virgil mentally urged him to _take the hint already. _One of them needed to get Remus out, and if Virgil was torn apart by a dragon at least it'd be quick. He'd come back eventually, wouldn't he? Roman and Remus had, when the Imagination had killed them in the past.

Not that it wouldn't hurt, but- he could handle that. Probably.

It didn't look like he'd have a choice.

The Dragon Witch snarled, low and rolling like thunder, and Roman said, forced-casual, "Madame, I implore you, don't listen to a word that imbecile says. Gerard Way's rotted his brain, you see, and it's made him too emo to function. We only keep him around to frighten pests, like a plastic owl."

Fuck you too, Princey. "Is that so?" the dragon asked, turning her attention to Virgil. "He doesn't _seem_ frightening. If anything, he seems like fright itself. What are you doing in my territory, Anxiety? I was under the impression you'd sworn off visiting my domain."

"What's it matter?" Virgil bit out, straining against her hold. One of her claws had scraped his cheek, was resting by his neck, and he could feel blood trickling down his face. If he moved wrong she'd tear his throat open. "I'm here now, and it's not to steal your stuff or anything. We just need to get to the Subconscious."

"The Subconscious," the Witch mused, lowering her head to sniff at him. He caught a flash of giant teeth and went still. "What for?"

"Personal business, I'm afraid," Roman said lightly. "Anxiety here lost something he'd like to get back. I'm not certain what it was, but given the evidence I believe it's his sense of humor-"

"You're seriously insulting me _now?"_

"Case in point!" Roman's hands were trembling, but he still smiled, forcing his shoulders relaxed like he was fighting off stage fright. "Here he is getting snappish and dreary at a simple meeting between friends. I can't take him _anywhere."_

"A sense of humor is a terrible thing to lose," the dragon agreed. Her amber eyes fixed on Virgil, bright and burning, and something in him writhed in fear. He pressed back into the grass, suddenly horrified by the thought of touching her, and she said, amused, "Like I said. A little _mouse_. Are you missing any other parts?"

"I'm definitely missing the point of this _monologue_," Virgil spat, because apparently he craved death. "Am I supposed to be learning something, or do you just like the sound of your own voice?"

The Dragon Witch narrowed her eyes, fire flickering behind her teeth. "You really_ don't_ have any manners. Your prince was the same way once, you know. He loved to shout about how I'm cruel and evil and will be vanquished one day, but I convinced him to speak more politely after a time. Perhaps you need a similar lesson."

"Madame, _please-" _Roman blurted, but her claw was already pressing down. Virgil choked, ribs cracking under the strain, breath forced from his lungs-

And something inside him caught and _pulled._

It was like he was a piece of cloth and she'd caught a thread, tugged it loose to unravel the whole thing. For a split second Virgil was _unmade,_ was _fearsenseprotectit, _vague and fuzzy like when they'd all been little and barely able to think, and then the agony rushed in to fill the gaps.

Virgil screamed. He _kept_ screaming, raw and electric like open nerves, the pain sharp and relentless and he'd _never_ felt like this, never in his life. He couldn't- there was _nothing, _no frame of reference, no part of Thomas' experience he could compare it to. It felt like she'd reached inside him and run a finger down his heart. Like she'd cupped a claw around his brain, touched a part of him nothing should be able to _reach, god, _he'd stop existing to get away for one measly second please god _please-_

The ground shook, pulling the weight off him, but Virgil couldn't process it. He curled into himself, scream cutting off into a raspy sob, and squeezed his chest, tried to convince himself he was in one piece. He felt unraveled. He felt _wrong_, like there was a hole in the center of him, but as he gasped for breath it filled in again. Fine. He was fine. Nothing was gone_, _he was _fine_, she must've attacked his mind or something. He was in one piece.

Roman caught his arm, dragging him roughly to his feet and shoving him back against a tree. Virgil stared up through tears at the Dragon Witch, reared up and shrieking fire, and realized the horizon had changed.

Half the mountain had been sheared away, and most of it had fallen on _them. _There was rubble strewn across the clearing, boulders as wide as the Witch's head fallen from on high, and one of her wings was caught beneath them; she yanked it loose with a screech of rage and turned on them, wild and bristling. Virgil hugged himself and caught his breath, tried to wipe his eyes surreptitiously with his sleeve. He couldn't stop shaking.

It hadn't even felt like _dying. _Was this what Roman had to deal with? God, how long had this been going on, how had they _ignored _it? He should've realized it was bad when Remus had come back that first time, manic and wide-eyed with half his guts hanging out. He should've done something then. _Everyone_ should have done something then.

This couldn't be good for Thomas.

The Dragon Witch stalked toward them, and Virgil flinched back. Roman pushed him against the tree and stepped forward, tense and trembling. "I'll raze the rest of it if I have to," he said, and somehow his voice was steady. "I don't care how you react. I'll tear it all to _nothing_, do you hear me? The other Sides aren't _part_ of this!"

The Witch had the nerve to look incredulous. "You threw a _mountain_ at me. You, the boring twin! I thought I'd broken you."

_What. _

"I don't want to fight you," Roman pleaded. "We only want to get to the Subconscious. If you let us pass, I won't damage your territory any more."

"You'll need to offer a better deal than that, Prince," the dragon said, twisting her sinuous body to circle the clearing. She was surrounding them, Virgil realized with a chill. Making sure they couldn't escape. He was suddenly, acutely aware of the knife in his grip. "If you break my territory, you'll incentivize _me_ to break the portal. You wouldn't want that, would you?"

Every second they spent here could be the second Remus _ceased to exist_. Virgil bit out, "What do you want?"

"_You_ would be nice," the Dragon Witch said, and he froze. "What say you, Prince? Anxiety until he dies, and in return I allow you to retrieve your quarry. I doubt he has much time left."

"Virgil isn't on offer," Roman gritted out. "Think of something else."

"Very well." The dragon's amber eyes seared into them, black-ringed and edged in fire. "Then fight me, Prince. In return, I will allow you both to enter the Subconscious- and if you should die, I will allow him alone."

"_Fuck_ no," Virgil snapped, because enough was _enough_. "Don't you dare."

"It will only take one of us to get him out," Roman said. "Even if she kills me-"

"I said _no_, Princey! We don't even know she'll keep her word." Virgil glared past him. Broken him. She'd thought she'd _broken _him, how fucking dare she- "She could be _lying_."

"Lying?" the Dragon Witch asked, and for a moment her tone was so much like Deceit's that it hurt. "Dear Prince, have you told him nothing? I'm an archetype. A _villain. _I am bound by my word, and those who give their word to me are bound in turn."

Virgil looked to Roman. "It's true," he promised. "She has to honor the bargains she makes. It's one of our few advantages."

A deal that trapped both of them didn't sound very advantageous. Virgil remembered his nightmare- the despair, the scattered anger, Remus eroding like a rock in the ocean- and swallowed hard. He _hated_ being the one to make the decisions. "So if Roman fights you, you'll let us go. And you won't attack any of us on the way out. Not me, not him, and not Remus."

Roman added, "You won't obstruct us, either. Even if it isn't a direct attack."

"I accept these terms," the Dragon Witch said, and Roman took a trembling breath, turned to Virgil with an unconvincing smile.

"This won't be long," he said, pale as milk and shaking, very faintly.

Virgil forced down his nausea. "It better not," he threatened. "In case you forgot, Princey, we have a _mission."_

Roman actually smiled. "Where would I _be_ without your constant reminders of all the time we don't have?"

"In bed, drooling," Virgil said, trying to sound unbothered, and Roman huffed out a laugh.

The fight started too fast for Virgil to catch. Roman lunged forward, ducking under a swipe of the Witch's tail and going straight for the injured wing, and his sword sliced through the battered membrane like a knife through tissue paper. The Dragon Witch screeched, whirling and slapping him across the clearing. Virgil's heart stopped.

Roman slammed into a tree trunk and sank to the ground, barely rising in time to dodge a stream of fire. He dove at the Witch again, getting in close where her claws couldn't reach.

It was obvious he'd fought her before. He moved like he could predict her, rolling under her claws and slashing at weak points- but she could predict _him, _too.

Roman was fast, but the Dragon Witch was _powerful. _Whatever bullshit limitations kept him from snapping her out of existence extended to his strength, too; he could get in too close for her jaws to reach, dodge through fire and clamber onto her back to cut at her spine, but he couldn't break her neck or drive his sword through her back. He went all out on every attack, but the Witch didn't extend him the same courtesy. She let him stand when she could have crushed his spine. She let him catch his breath when she hit him off his feet.

She was playing with him. Roman was desperate, trying to get to the Subconscious before Remus disappeared, trying to keep her from hurting Virgil more, and she was enjoying it. Whatever hits she took were nothing compared to what she did to him. He was terrified and fighting her anyway, and she laughed every time she drew blood.

_I thought I'd broken you, _Virgil remembered, and then the Witch pinned Roman to the ground, fire building in her mouth, and as much as he struggled he wasn't getting _away_-

Virgil charged forward and drove his knife into her open throat.

**"Get the _fuck _away from him!"**

The Dragon Witch reared back, and Virgil yanked Roman out from under her. "Virgil-"

"Shut the fuck up," Virgil snapped, tense with adrenaline. "You've exhausted your moron quota for the day." Was that unfair, considering the situation? Yeah, probably. Too bad Virgil didn't give a shit.

He wanted to fight. He wanted to rip this threat to shreds, stomp it flat, make it bleed until he killed it. He wanted to make it _suffer._

The Dragon Witch screamed, spewing fire so close that it seared the tips of his hair, and Virgil screamed back. Molten metal- the knife, she'd fucking _melted _it- dripped from her maw. "You _dare_ interrupt me?"

"Interrupt what, your sadistic torturefest?" Virgil hissed. "I'm not part of your stupid game. I don't give a _shit _what I get in the way of." The dragon arched back her neck, glaring down at him with hateful eyes, but Virgil was too furious to be afraid. He could see a gush of blood at the side of her neck, near the shoulder, where Roman's sword had cut through to muscle. He could imagine shoving a branch through her eyes to pierce the brain. He was desperate instinct, _kill it before it kills me, _and fear was his forward momentum. They were _wasting time. _"Princey fought you. Now he's done. Hold up your end of the bargain."

The Dragon Witch snarled, low and guttural, "The end is not for you to decide."

"Too bad I don't care what you think," Virgil said. He backed up, keeping his eyes on the threat, and grabbed Roman by the arm. "C'mon, Sir Sing-A-Lot." Roman stumbled to his feet, clutching an arm around his middle. Half his face was covered in blood from a wound on his forehead, and his white clothes were staining red. His sword had disappeared. The dragon lunged forward after him- Roman _flinched_\- and Virgil stepped between them. His whole body was shaking, wired with rage and loathing. "He dropped his sword. He's _done. _We're leaving."

The Dragon Witch snarled and drew back. "You'd better hope you aren't too late," she hissed. "I hear the Subconscious can tear a Side apart in _minutes_." She disappeared in a whirl of air, leaving the clearing empty. Near the treeline, some of the scorched grass smoldered into flame.

"She isn't really gone," Roman said weakly. Virgil pulled his free arm over his shoulder, taking some of his weight, and Roman leaned into him gratefully. "So long as we're here, she'll be following our movements."

"What the _fuck_, Princey. Why do you even keep her around?"

Roman turned his head to give a halfhearted glare. "It's hardly a choice, Neverending Worry. She's like a cancer. Thomas came up with her when we are all small, and kept bringing her up, and then she just- didn't leave. The Imagination runs on stories. _Something_ has to be the villain."

"It can't just use Remus?"

"Sides don't count," Roman huffed, "or I'd have made _you_ a castle and carted you in." He stiffened all of a sudden, making Virgil glance around wildly for the threat. "God, I- Virgil, what did she _do _to you? The way you screamed, I didn't- are you all right? Are you injured somewhere?"

Virgil looked down at his body, but besides the scratch on his face, he couldn't find any injuries. "I guess not? Whatever she did, it didn't leave any marks."

"Wonderful," Roman said, pained. "The last thing we need is that witch learning new tricks." He took a shaky breath, slumping, and Virgil barely kept from stumbling. "The portal is in her lair, by the way. I don't suppose we'll make it on foot, considering I'm barely able to walk."

Virgil looked up at the sheared-off mountain and fought a wave of hopelessness. Even if they _could _get there on foot, it'd take more than a few hours. Even more time that Remus didn't have. "Unless you've got a ski lift in your pocket, I'm not seeing another choice."

"I can do you one better," Roman said, trying to smile, and then they were in a cave.

Virgil shrieked and pedaled backward, staring frantically at the dark chamber. There was a lit torch on the far wall, but its light barely even glinted off the piles of treasure spread along the bare floor. The rest of the cave was drowned in shadow. There was a dark mirror in the farthest corner, wretchedly familiar. The sight of it sent a chill up Virgil's spine. He sucked in a breath, trying to slow his racing heart. "Did we just _teleport?" _

"It's much easier to work _with_ the challenges of the narrative, but we are on a time limit," Roman panted, sinking to the ground. His face was deathly pale. "In this sort of situation it takes a lot out of me, but it isn't as though I'll be much other use _now." _He glanced at the pile of gold and precious jewels beside him, dug out a diamond tiara, and nestled it in his hair with a weak grin. "This suits me, don't you think? I'm a true damsel now. A pretty, pretty princess."

"Fabulous," Virgil deadpanned, but the sight of Princey being _Princey _soothed something in his chest. "Does it make you feel sexy?"

"Oh, shut up, Lord of the Wrongs. I fought a dragon today. You're not allowed to make fun of me."

"You're not fighting her anymore," Virgil said darkly. Roman laughed, and he snapped, "I'm not kidding. After we fix whatever the hell is wrong with Remus, we're coming back and getting rid of her. I don't care how villainous she is."

Roman leaned his head back against the wall. "Get Remus back, already," he said tiredly. "I hate being up so early."

_"Princey-"_

"I can't talk about this right now," Roman snapped. "The portal's that mirror over there, just- get him out, all right? I hate having to fight her alone."

Virgil felt sick. "How many times has she killed you?"

"Not at all, the past few months," Roman said, and Virgil hated how he felt _relieved_. "She's been less aggressive lately, I thought- well, we all know I don't tend to think, really. I suppose I hoped she'd gotten weaker."

"You could have told us," Virgil said, furious with helplessness. "I get if you didn't want to tell me, but you could've told Logan or Patton."

"Told them _what?_ That I can't control my own domain? What in the world would _Patton_ have been able to do?" Roman waved a hand, infinitely tired and somehow _regal, _even with the stupid tiara. "We all have our burdens to bear. Right now _yours_ is getting my brother back."

He glared, and Virgil choked out, "Right," because he didn't know what else to do. What _could_ he do? He couldn't fix the Imagination on his own. He couldn't even get into the Dark Side, couldn't contact Deceit or find Remus, could barely keep Thomas from killing himself on accident. He wasn't equipped for this, but all the Sides who _were _had been knocked out of commission.

He went to the mirror. Its frame was cold iron, chill to the touch, and his reflection in the glass was dark and clouded, barely recognizable as a human form. Virgil raised a hand and it copied him, fractured and delayed, shifting while he stood perfectly still.

He felt like he was staring into the Underworld. Sides weren't supposed to _go _down there, so deep into Thomas' mind that coherence was an afterthought. Virgil had been so paranoid about the Dark Side portal that he'd padlocked it shut, and Deceit had approved.

Remus shouldn't have been able to get through at all. Virgil remembered his dream- Deceit broken into symbols and impressions, Remus begging for an explanation, sense and feeling twisted together- and shivered.

"Wish me luck," he croaked, wrestling his terror down, and stepped into darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No Remus POV this chapter, but don't worry, we'll see him again.
> 
> TW: graphic depictions of violence, brief torture, someone getting really beat up, mentions of death, implied abuse
> 
> The referenced song is "Sympathy, Tenderness" from Jekyll and Hyde: The Musical.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Virgil is not a fan of the ocean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posted at like 2 AM, so later edits for flow may be incoming!
> 
> TW at end of chapter.

Virgil plunged into blackness so complete it felt like being wrapped in a cloak. His ears filled with a billowy roar, ocean-loud, and when he opened his eyes they stung with salt. It took a moment to recognize the feeling on his skin as _water_. The current dragged at his clothes.

Great. Virgil steeled himself and sucked in a breath. Saltwater flooded his lungs, driving out air in thick bubbles, but he didn't drown; his body just stopped trying to float, letting him hang suspended in the dusky cold.

Slowly, his eyes adjusted to the gloom. He started to make out long strands of kelp, trailing down into the endless dark below and reaching up to some distant surface. Strange skittering shadows clung to them, shying from Virgil's line of sight and making it hard to look for any specific movement. The current pulled at the kelp, too, tugging them in invisible waves and setting Virgil's nervousness to overdrive. Thomas' instincts were based on _land, _where motion meant wind or an animal, something abnormal. He'd never spent enough time underwater to distinguish danger from banality below the surface.

It figured that Remus would end up underwater of all places. Guy was slimy enough as it was.

Virgil hated the Subconscious so _fucking_ much. The last time he'd been there Thomas had been fifteen, and Virgil had crept through the door in a fit of pique to get a look at the threat, stupidly curious; back then it had manifested for him as a gloomy cave, like some kind of fantasy goblin lair. He'd gotten more spidery as he'd gone along, eyes multiplying and legs sticking from his back, and Deceit had had to chase him down. Any longer and he'd have fallen to pieces.

That had spooked him straight. Gay. Whatever. He'd padlocked the thing shut, making it so hard to open that even Remus in one of his moods couldn't get through with anything less than dynamite, and even that wasn't too effective. Even if it _had_ been loud.

But that wasn't the point. The _point_ was, Virgil hated the Subconscious and hated Remus for putting him in this position in the first place, and if he didn't stop thinking about how it'd change him he'd start panicking and _no one _wanted that. Eyes forward, Virgil. Focus on the mission.

He let himself sink, watching for signs of trash rat, and caught the outline of a pale hand in the distance. Virgil's heart leaped into his throat. He kicked forward, flailing against the current and grabbing at tendrils of kelp to keep from being swept away. Dragging himself forward took a lot more effort than he usually gave to anything, but it paid off; he reached the tangled form without falling into the endless dark, which he was gonna go ahead and call a win.

He reached down to the limp, pale form, turning Remus onto his back, and jerked back with a bubbling scream.

Remus' corpse was bloated and discolored, tongueless and blue-purple with congealed blood. His fingernails were long and scraggly, skin drawn back from the and his eyes were eaten-out pits. Virgil forced back his nausea and moved closer, squinting to see through the dark and running a hand along the corpse's front. He couldn't risk tugging it loose from the kelp- it might sink down, and who knew how he'd get it back then- but if Remus was gone-

God, he _couldn't_ be gone-

Virgil squeezed his eyes shut and _reached, _trying to find a hint of _blood-filth-creativity,_ all the thoughts that Thomas felt a gut-deep repulsion for, the darker parts of human existence. Dirt and disease, perversions and atrocities, all the things Thomas wanted to repress and ignore because people wouldn't really do that to each other, people wouldn't _really _think that, _come on, Remus, help me come up with something __worse-_

The corpse twitched under his hand. Virgil felt a swell of despair, crushing and foreign; in the Subconscious Sides could bleed together like watercolors, sensing things they usually couldn't reach. He shuddered, riding it through, and the despair subsided into a chilly numbness. Remus wasn't all here. Parts of him were somewhere else in this hellhole. He was already falling to pieces.

One piece down.

"Stay here," Virgil tried to say, and swam out to open waters. The bleeding effect was still there, roiling under his skin, but beyond the despair was a distant, howling rage, loss and grief and hateful fury. Virgil closed his eyes and felt it intensify, narrowed to a pinprick of loathing like a computer latching onto a target.

He wasn't a fast enough swimmer to dodge.

The monster cannonballed into him, wrapping a slimy hand around his neck and bearing him down into the dark. Virgil screamed and thrashed, sound going nowhere, and the creature tightened its grip. Too many tentacles, too many _eyes_\- Virgil writhed, bit, snarled in panic, but the thing didn't let go. It was dragging him down, down into the dark, and he'd fall apart too and that'd be _it, _no one coming back to help, Thomas reduced to recklessness until it _killed him_-

_"Remus!" _

Down, down, down- Virgil grabbed at one of the kelp strands, scrabbling, trying to wrap around it to slow his descent. The monster roared, and Virgil threw himself back; the sound was earsplitting, shrill and subsonic at once, like point-blank whalesong. The hand around his neck squeezed down, sending spikes of agony into his brain. He didn't need to breathe, he wasn't breathing, but losing the option made alarm bells go off in his head. He couldn't stop his instincts.

The dark came closer. Virgil felt himself peeling apart layer by layer: fear, vigilance, self-preservation, his own thoughts and mind all fragmenting apart. "Remus, stop, it's me please _stop you **have to-" **_His voice choked off, and he clawed at the clammy hand around his throat, suffocating under the weight of the rage. Destruction, sadistic retribution, _if-I-can't-have-it-burn-it-down_, all determined to pull him apart because why should it be the only one here, why did even this have to be ruined why why _why-_

Couldn't Remus cooperate for _once_ in his life? Virgil pushed past the screaming voices in his head and wrenched his fingers under the monster's, writhed loose for a split second of open windpipe- **_"Something's wrong with Janus!"_**

The name jangled around in his head, sending aimless nerve-twitch impulses to his hands and making them jerk weakly toward his mouth. Deceit hated people knowing his name with the fervor of an informant in witness protection, and even when it'd just been them in the dark he hadn't liked them to use it. Virgil suspected he had to keep secrets, like how Virgil had to prowl the corners of a new room to make sure there weren't hidden threats. Even now, removed to the main part of Thomas' mind, the compulsion to keep his mouth shut remained.

The monster's hands had jolted, too. It froze, inky silhouette going loose and finned, and pinned Virgil with its lack of eyes. He forced down his fear at being held so tightly, unable to escape and what if it kept dragging him down or killed him or _worse_, and took advantage of the loosened hand around his neck. "I can't get into the Dark Side," he explained, heart hitching at the feel of water passing through his lungs. He could already feel himself going less solid as he dissolved into the primordial soup of the Subconscious. Any moment now he'd start growing gills. "He won't answer us, and if you're here that proves something's wrong. He _never_ let us touch that door."

_He let me, _came the thought, foreign and enraged. _He let me! He made me he loved me he _hates _me i hate love hate _him_-_

"Where's the rest of you?" Virgil demanded. His hands didn't feel like hands. His mouth didn't feel like a mouth, and he was breathing water and exhaling through his chest, flaps of skin rippling open to exhale the current- "Where's-" _Creativity, spontaneity, take-and-turn-to-music? _Virgil couldn't think right. Words were slipping away like guppies through a wide net, like Thomas's friends would once they realized his personality had changed and he'd be left alone, nothing to ground him and threats all around and it would be _Virgil's fault. _Terror planted hooks. It dragged him back. "Do you even fucking know?"

The wraith's grip tightened. Virgil screamed, bones creaking under the strain, and the creature's mouth yawned wide, too wide, wider than its _face,_ a lamprey recoiling to reveal its ringed-round teeth. The face opened up, and something green and squishy smacked into Virgil's face and _clung._

Virgil yanked himself back and clawed the thing off his head, pulling the tentacles free with painful suction-cup pops. _Ow, ow, fucking ow. _He glared at the octopus, heart pounding- what kind of hentai bullshit was this- and hissed when it reached up to smack him with a slimy appendage. Didn't octopi taste with their tentacles? It was basically licking him, wasn't it.

At least that meant he could be sure it was Remus. Creativity glowed through the thing in rainbows. "You _ate_ it?" The monster didn't respond. Whatever. "Follow me," Virgil snapped, trying to make it sound like an order someone should follow. "We're putting you back together."

Virgil swam back to the corpse, clutching the octopus close to his chest. The wraith fixed its leech-mouth to the body's face; they melded together in a headache-inducing blur, forming into something distinctly Remus-shaped. The octopus disappeared into the mouth, and then it _was_ Remus. Virgil could have cried with relief. "Are you done scuba diving now?" he demanded. "Can we go?"

Remus fixed him with dark, red-rimmed eyes. "Depends," he said, bright and raw like open nerves. "Do you know how to get out of here, Virgie? 'Cause I don't have a _fucking clue!"_

"Dee got out of here before," Virgil said weakly. He remembered that, as much as he could remember his excursion into this hellworld; extra legs and skittering to dark places, menacing Deceit with curved-dagger fangs and trapping him in coils of web, trying to strike first because his scattershot instincts had him _certain _Deceit wanted him dead- but Deceit had pulled him together. Janus had gotten him out. How had he done that, again?

"He doesn't care about us. He doesn't care about me and he doesn't know you're here, we're gonna fall apart like _bodies_ in a _woodchipper_-"

"Shut up," Virgil forced out, clawing at his ears. There was a high whine building in his head, Remus' runaway train of thought tearing toward him with broken brakes. The pitch climbed up and up, louder and louder, worse than sirens, than jet engines, than _gunshots_\- "Stop, stop it, stop talking!"

_"He hates us! You left and he hates you, he hates me, we're gonna die kicking and screaming and he's gonna _laugh_-"_

Virgil screamed, and there was no sound to it. Just vicious wrenching _terror, _and that was all he was becoming, legs pushing out of the skin at his back and cold chitin scrambling down his arm and away, far away where he couldn't reach to bring it back. He splintered, fractured, kaleidoscoped apart, a thousand colors and none of them him, none of them whole.

Then there was a new sound, distant like a transmission from another planet. Faint laughter and cheerful voices, music playing in another room...

Virgil clawed himself back together, fragments retreating under his skin. Fear, instinct, protective impulse, hatred of preps- yep, all accounted for. Good job, Virgil. Ten out of ten. He gasped out, "Thomas is at a party," and the shriek cut off like it'd been shot.

"Huh," Remus said after a minute. The laughter was getting louder, sights and sounds coming into focus. "Is there booze?"

"There could be drugs," Virgil said. He was seeing things from too many angles. His tongue found fangs in his mouth. "It could be dangerous." He groped for the connection, the lifeline that let Thomas stay properly afraid, and- "He's talking to someone." More sensations, filtered like light through dirty water. Virgil felt a thrill of anxiety. "To a _guy_."

"Is he hot?" Remus asked intently.

Smooth dark skin, taller than Thomas, neatly trimmed beard and intricate spirals shaved into his buzzed-short hair, a smile that lit up the room- "_Yes," _Virgil said, "fuck, yes, he is, Thomas is going to embarrass himself I can _tell-" _and it shivered through him, that spike of vindictive nerves, _how dare you relax in this room of strangers-_

And they were in a crowded room, chili-pepper string lights strewn above their heads and a warm murmur of conversation banking up against them like an incoming tide. The lighting was dim and yellow, Ed Sheeran piping over their heads. Behind them a group of people burst into laughter, and Virgil's shoulders rose up to his ears.

He glanced around wildly and caught a snippet of conversation, Thomas's voice high with nervous attraction: "So _I_ said-"

The foreboding hit a second before Remus asked, dementedly cheerful, "Think he'll sit on your _face?"_

_"Aagh!"  
_

Hot Guy blinked. Virgil winced in shared humiliation. "You screamed?"

Thomas stared at Remus, caught between incredulity and anger, then turned back. "Uh, haha, yeah! It was, um, very shocking. I was very shocked. Sorry, something just came up, really nice talking to you but if you'll excuse me?"

"Sure," Hot Guy said, looking kinda weirded out. Thomas retreated to the bathroom in a flurry of apologies.

He slammed and locked the door with a sigh of relief. Virgil, unable to contain himself, blurted, "He probably hates you now."

"Thanks, Virge," Thomas groaned. "Just what I needed to hear." He dragged a hand over his face, did a double take, and froze. "Virgil! What happened to your face? Why are you _wet?"_

"It's because he's turned on," Remus offered. "Also, an octopus! That was me." He shivered all over, clothes dripping salt onto the tile. Virgil languished in a sopping wet hoodie, cold trickling into his bones, and pushed his limp bangs out of his face. "I fucking... tentacle fucked his face. That makes sense. I like that." He swayed and sat on the toilet. "Tentafuck. Fucktacle."

Thomas stared after him. "Okay, what the heck."

"We're, uh. Working on something. Don't worry about it." Virgil considered. "Or do worry about it. You should always be worried. Don't take any drinks from strangers or they'll kidnap you."

"And torture you to death!"

"Yeah. That." Virgil's sight went blurry. He groped back for the wall and slid down, put his pounding head between his knees. His chest hurt. His arms hurt, thanks for _nothing_ Remus, and every breath felt wrong and Roman was still in the witch's lair and it _hurt, _things weren't right and he could feel it but he couldn't do anything about it_-_

His eyes stung. He curled his legs in and focused on the bathroom floor, breathing shallow. Four seconds in. Seven seconds holding his breath, like in the water where the light wouldn't reach, where Remus's rage was dragging him down- "Eight seconds out," Thomas murmured, and Virgil realized he'd been talking the whole time. "That's right, Virge, you're doing good."

Virgil choked out a laugh. Deceit was MIA, Remus was a dead guy and an octopus, and Roman was bleeding out in a cave, but at least Virgil was recovering from a panic attack in some stranger's bathroom. He caught Remus lounging on the toilet in the corner of his eye and remembered a spill of intestines, Roman's fear-pale face. Here was _one_ problem he might be able to solve. "How attached are you to imaginary friends?"

Thomas frowned. "If you're referring to you guys-"

"Dragon Witch," Virgil clarified, because yeah, that had sounded pretty weird. "How attached are you to the Dragon Witch."

Thomas looked to Remus, who was staring raptly at the ceiling, then back at Virgil. The question was written plain on his face. "I- don't remember him being real?"

"One time she stole my kidney," Remus said distantly. He was still shivering, blood beading at the corner of his lip. Virgil really hoped the saltwater coating the tile was all in Thomas's head. "Pretty sure I died. That means if you have sex with me it's necrophilia." His head lolled, eyes rolling to meet Thomas's gaze. "You trying to get rid of her, Something About Scary?"

"Let's just say I'm sick of finding new problems," Virgil bit out. "I got to meet her in person today. Not super keen on doing it again."

Thomas studied Virgil closer, gaze flicking over him. "What do you guys do in there all day? I thought it was just, I don't know, hanging out, but if there's a whole dragon in the mix-"

"Don't think about it," Virgil said, at the same time Remus whined, "Don't make it weird! It might get boring."

If _boring_ meant less Sides getting disemboweled, Virgil was all for it, but that really wasn't a conversation to have in front of Thomas. "Look," he said instead, "all I'm asking is if you'd be mad if she disappeared. Does she actually do anything useful?"

Thomas worried his lip. "I don't really think about her anymore," he admitted. "So I don't think so, but wouldn't she be gone already if that was all it took?"

Virgil shrugged. "Maybe we need to shift something else to get rid of her. Like, uh," he wracked his brain, "resetting a computer."

"You are _not _turning me off and on again!"

Virgil glared. "I'm just _saying_-"

Someone knocked, and Thomas went white. Virgil froze up too, curling into his hoodie like it could hide them both. Great, now someone at the party had overheard Thomas talking to himself, and there'd be rumors about him losing his mind and he'd lose all his followers and- "Occupied!" Thomas blurted out, even paler. He shot Virgil a dirty look. Virgil made a face.

"'Kay, but you've been in there like twenty minutes," drawled a wonderfully familiar voice, and all three of them relaxed against their will. Thomas sent him and Remus an awkward look and bustled over to the toilet, flushing it pointlessly and rinsing his hands in the sink.

"Don't forget soap," Remus reminded him. "Makes for good lube!"

"Like ninety percent sure that's a lie," Thomas said uneasily, and opened the door. Virgil yanked Remus upright and followed him, shoes squelching with every step. Remus kept staring at the ceiling, murmuring something too quiet to catch. Virgil wished he could chalk it up to Remus being weird in general. "Hey, Joan."

"Hey, Thomas," Joan replied, lips quirking. "So are you done with whatever that was, or do you wanna spend like twenty more minutes talking to yourself in a public setting?"

"I'm done," Thomas said sheepishly, "but, uh. I think I'd better go home. I'm not feeling too good right now."

"What, like, you're sick?" Joan's gaze sharpened with concern. "I was gonna stay for another hour, but if you really need a ride-"

"I'll call an Uber," Thomas promised, and Virgil felt a tremor of nerves at having to talk to a stranger in a car. A kidnapping was the last thing Thomas needed right now. "You have fun."

"Sure, if you're sure," Joan said, nudging Thomas's shoulder. "Stay safe, okay? _Call me_ if something's wrong. I don't wanna see you on the side of a milk carton in a couple days."

"I'll do my best," Thomas said, glancing nervously at a swaying Remus. "Have a good night!"

They escaped into the night air. Virgil stepped onto the sidewalk and looked both ways- never could be too careful- then said, "No one's hiding in the bushes. It's probably safe."

"Thanks," Thomas said dryly. Virgil gave him a little salute. "So you guys are gonna deal with whatever's going on?"

"That's the plan," Virgil said, and an idea struck. "Wait. Can you summon Deceit?"

Remus went stock still behind him. Thomas blinked, streetlight throwing his face into sharp relief. "Uh, I guess? Never done that before." He shifted awkwardly, glancing down the street like someone might come save him. "Does he have something to do with what's going on?"

"Does it matter?" Virgil gritted out, about to insist with **force** if necessary, when Remus snarled, "_Do it already!"_

Thomas balked. "Okay, jeez!" He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Virgil felt his mind reaching out, _where are you I need a lie,_ and for a moment he thought it'd work, that Thomas was the key to this convoluted lock and they'd been running in circles for no reason-

Thomas made a pained noise and clutched his head, mind snapping back like an overextended rubber band. Virgil's heart skipped about a thousand beats. "Thomas?"

"'M fine," he said, wincing. "Just- migraine. Sort of. Saw colors." He rubbed his forehead. "I'm guessing that's not a good sign."

No kidding. "We'll take care of it," Virgil said, hugging himself. "Get home so you can sleep. That might help." He surveyed the dark street again- the shadowed patches between sparse streetlights, the tall trees and bushes that could hide a grown man, the lack of witnesses- and added, "If someone follows you in a car, double back and run."

"I'm calling an Uber."

"I know what I said." Too many places for strangers to hide. If Thomas got jumped from behind- if he was ambushed, if he didn't have a place to run- "Don't let your guard down. If your Uber driver tries to take you somewhere weird-"

"I know what to do," Thomas assured him. "You can go if you have to." He pulled out his phone and showed Virgil the screen with a reassuring smile. "See? It's fine. I'll be fine."

"You'd better be," Virgil said, steeling himself. He wanted to hide under his covers and sleep for a thousand years. He wanted to talk everything out with Logan and Patton. He wanted the Dragon Witch _dead-_ but mostly he wanted to lay eyes on Deceit and demand to know what the _fuck _was going on.

First things first, he told himself. Right now they had to get back to Roman. Everything else could wait.

At least, he really fucking hoped it could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: body horror, sexual references, description of a corpse, description of violence


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Remus and Virgil get back. No one has a fun time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW's at end notes.
> 
> Thanks to alicat54c for beta reading! 
> 
> Also, later edits will pretty much just be for flow and grammar.

Remus could feel the octopus crawling around inside him, curling tentacles around his organs like a reverse phantom limb. Like if he'd swallowed a twin in the womb and there were little malformed baby arms groping at his small intestine, reaching from the wrong side of the skin and trying to choke the life out of him. Him but not him. Within him but apart.

He was brainstorming with his digestive system, ideas gurgling up like Lovecraftian vomit, as entrancing as the bubbles in an oil hourglass. Remus was so preoccupied trying to follow along from the  _ outside _ for once that he almost didn't notice when they landed in the cavern.

Then he felt a ping of fellow-recognition, attractive and repulsive like a fucked-up magnet, and the awareness fell back into him like intestines getting rearranged. Roman struggled to his feet and blurted, "Remus!" as Virgil rushed over to prop him up like a bristly mobility device; Remus tilted his head and matched his brother's bloodstains to wounds. Hadn't gotten here unscathed, had they. "Are you in one piece? Any missing parts? Why were you even  _ there?" _

"Dee kicked me out," Remus said, and the desperate rage stole up again, making the core of him scream for violence. "He hates me, he _kicked me_ _out, _he said he'd never and he_ did _because he's a _fucking _**_LIAR-"_**

"He forced you into the  _ Subconscious?" _ Virgil demanded.

"Keeping me around at this point isn't beneficial," Remus said, because the words were easy, they'd been ricocheting around his head all day. "He said he didn't care at all, it was a lie and he's a liar and I was just trying to help!" The weeds were gone. They'd turned into tentacles, clutching at his lungs and squeezing so they couldn't inflate, could only flail weakly behind his ribs, because Dee was a liar but he hadn't been lying, had he, not then. If he had been, the door to the Subconscious wouldn't have been unlocked in the first place. "He was being weirder than _ me." _

"I can imagine a lot of things, but I can't imagine that," Roman said. "He said he didn't care about you? Are you certain it wasn't that dastardly double talk of his?"

** _"Don't ask me that,"_ ** Remus snarled, and Roman's eyes sparked, that fighting impulse rising up to say  _ I'm better and I'll prove it.  _ Remus longed to hook him in with a scythe through the guts, cut him in half and show him how much shit he couldn't imagine with his namby-pamby fairy tale bullshit-

Virgil glared them both down and snapped, "Weird  _ how?" _

Remus's rage hit a pothole at seventy miles per hour and overturned, killing everyone inside. Deceit's ankle. His tension, the bags under his eyes, raw meat at four in the morning... it'd been cool, sure, but  _ pretty  _ unexpected for a clean freak like Dee.

"He was limping," Remus said, which meant Deceit had been walking on the wound and probably still was, and wasn't it fun to imagine how much that had to hurt? Bones grinding together, ligaments tearing, every step an agony and DeeDee walking anyway because he didn't trust Remus, because he was  _ scared  _ of him- "Looked kinda fucked up. I thought he was being a snake."

"Why would a snake limp?" Roman asked. "They don't even have legs."

Good point! But what if they did. Spindly little lindworm legs, dragging themselves around like double-amputee bodybuilders, snake abs, or _ snabs-  _ "He was eating raw meat from the refrigerator," Remus said, as snakes with legs rapidly morphed into Janus, glaring over a first aid kit and asking why he wasn't gone yet.  _ Dee _ had legs. "Which was cool, but  _ kind of _ out of character."

" _ Also _ not necessarily a snake thing-"

** _"Keep up those remarks and you'll get fridged like Green Lantern's girlfriend."_ **

"I'm just saying!" Roman waved an arm and winced, shoulders drawing in. "He never ate raw meat before, did he? I was under the impression that he was rather fastidious."

"His tiddies are pretty fast," Remus said, because  _ respect,  _ "but he would've said if something was wrong, if-" If he didn't hate Remus. "He would've  _ said _ . Unless he hates me, so he didn't."

"But that doesn't make any sense! Hatred wouldn't make him eat raw meat," Roman argued, then paused. "Unless it really does twist the mind as fairy tales claim, which I suppose is always an option."

"You think we'd all get fucked-up extra limbs if Thomas really hated someone?" Remus wondered, caught by the phrasing. "Or like three extra tongues. Dee could have those because he hates me, which he does because he fucking exiled me to _ certain doom,  _ or, hey, what if we got three tongues and three assholes so you could perform triple oral on yourself-"

"Fuck," Virgil blurted.

"Yeah, exactly, but triple it," Remus said, and Virgil made a jerking, flailing motion with his hand.

"Shut- shut the fuck up. That's not what I'm talking about." His eyes were distant, spare hand clenching in his hoodie. "It's-  _ fuck _ , what the fuck are they- no, you morons, turn  _ around-" _

"What are you doing?" Roman demanded, untangling himself and immediately going pale. He swayed, managing to prop himself up on the wall, and managed, "Is something  _ else  _ wrong?"

"He's using his Spidey-sense! Someone's about to get their insides liquefied and sucked out through a silly straw-"

"No," said Virgil, "Shut up. It's just a feeling. Roman, tell me it's just a feeling."

" _ What's _ just a-" and then Roman faltered, and Remus felt it too, like ripples through a bog as some stupid asshole fell through mud to suffocate: two new presences, sweet and prickly-smart, tromping through the forest like babes in the wood. Hansel and Gretel, getting lost and about to be  _ devoured. _

"Looks like  _ someone _ forgot to lay down the breadcrumbs!" Remus exulted, and Virgil clutched his hands in his hair.

"The deal doesn't cover them," he wheezed. "She's going to kill them or  _ worse _ , there's no reason not to and she's already pissed from us stopping her once-"

"What's she gonna do to  _ Logan?"  _ Remus scoffed. "He's basically Deadpool. She's not about to take  _ him _ down."

"But she'll get Patton," Virgil hissed. "He'll probably try to negotiate and get caught in some deal or burned to death, and then he'll be traumatized forever and she'll, like, gain in power or some shit."

"Not a thing, and also not if we can help it," Roman said, managing to lever himself to his feet. A few drops of blood fell to the pile of gold beneath him, so dark in the torchlight that they were almost black. Blood and gold together made for the gnarliest jewel tones. "Remus?"

"You can count on me! Way more than you can on Virgil. I have twenty- _ eight  _ ribs."

Then he wrenched them all out of place before Virgil could hiss or protest, easy as dislocating a shoulder.

They landed in a snarl of brambles; Roman swore, Virgil scrambling up to pull them both loose, and Remus let the thorns drag out of his skin, leaving bloody scraps of dermis behind. They were at the edge of an overgrown pasture, catching sight of two blue dots on the far hill.

Virgil glanced desperately back at Roman, blood-soaked and staggering, and Roman said, "Virgil, could you-"

"Yeah," he said, and took off at a run. Remus pulled his morningstar (also what he called his dick, which regrettably stayed in his pants) from the background noise of the Imagination and felt Roman summon his sword.

"So what's the deal?" he asked, because he'd always figured agreements with the Dragon Witch were stupid. Just attack and try to shove your weapon somewhere uncomfortable so she left out of embarrassment, that was his strategy. It worked pretty well! He only got disemboweled sixty percent of the time, every time.

Roman grimaced. "She wouldn't let us pass into the Subconscious without some bargain for the journey, and for safe passage on our return. She wanted a fight."

"Shit, really?" Remus poked Roman's side, and he yelped, jerking away with a betrayed look. Huh, he really was hurt. "How're you even alive?"

"Virgil took offense," Roman said.  _ How's  _ he _ alive,  _ Remus wanted to ask, but Roman beat him to it. "She did something to him, before the fight," he admitted, and to Remus's wonder his voice was shaking. "He- he screamed. I'd never heard him do that before."

"So you've never heard him in bed? Huh, I'm surprised, I always figured you Light Sides were hooking up left and right like bonobos, really putting the  _ Dad _ in daddy kink-" Roman went scarlet and shoved him, and Remus cackled. The black dot reached the blue ones and waved its arms, which Remus took as his cue. "Whaddaya say we catch up with the rest of the field trip?"

"If you'd rather go on ahead," Roman started, and Remus scooped him up princess-style. "What, no, that's not what I-  _ unhand me!" _

"No can do, brother mine! We gotta speedrun this shit." Also, Roman only had two hands, and Remus figured this was the kinda situation where he might need both. He hefted Roman up and legged it.

Virgil rushed over to fuss as soon as they arrived, a big change from fussing over the other new arrivals; Remus plopped Roman down and asked cheerily, "So who's ready to get their asses kicked? Nerdy Wolverine, you're on offense, I'm offensive, Dee's probably dead or something-"

"He's what?" Patton squeaked.

"Dead," Remus said with a vicious grin. "Gone, possessed, evil, fucked up beyond all relief, or, hey, you know what's most likely? He wants all that to happen to  _ me!  _ And here I thought we two were  _ bestest _ friends."

"He kicked him out," Virgil explained, helping Roman limp to his feet. Patton hovered nearby, hands raised like he wanted to dive in at the slightest misstep. "Into the  _ Subconscious _ ."

Logan looked like he'd been up all night studying and hadn't had the chance to sleep it off. He straightened his tie, standing awkwardly on the imaginary ground; the grass didn't fold under his weight, and the wind left his clothes unruffled. He frowned. "But that might have resulted in your death, or at least in a cessation of autonomous existence."

"Pretty sure he didn't care," Remus said, and Patton shivered. "Also, why the fuck are you here?"

"I had a dream," Patton said, biting his lip. "Kind of a bad one? But you're here, which I guess means half of the problem is solved, except if Deceit's really hurt then I think the other half of the problem is still there. He didn't look so good when I saw him."

Virgil winced. "Was it the jewels and seaweed?"

"No," Patton admitted, "just weird and scary. We were at a tea party, but something was wrong with him. I couldn't see him clearly."

"More precisely, you described his appearance as blurry and off-putting, then said it was  _ uncanny _ valley, not un- _ can't _ -y, so there was no reason we shouldn't try to track down the other Sides ourselves once we noticed they were missing." Logan narrowed his eyes at Virgil and Roman. "A bit of wordplay that would likely have been entirely avoided had you simply left a  _ note." _

"We were in a rush," Roman defended. "Excuse us for not considering domestic  _ courtesy _ , Dear  _ Rudence _ -"

Remus let the discussion fade into the background, like a swimmer's quiet gasps for help as they lost access to air and drowned. The Imagination seethed and curdled around him, deadening the grass and souring the air; he felt mycelia twining their skeletal fingers under the grass, sculpting plans for deadly fungal growths that ate up the land like alien skyscrapers. The spores would shed off them and ride the air, settling on trees and castles alike, and seep their ways into the foundations to cover them in fine layers of fungus, mutated amanitas and morels and nameless white growths that bled red when touched.

His awareness spread the same way. The octopus reached a tentacle up his throat to explore the roof of his mouth, sending fascinated starbursts up behind his eyes, and Remus felt a pair of villages descend into war, heard a wolf scream as a deer chewed meat from the injured creature's mangled haunch and pawed the ground, tasted bile as a kid drank from a poisoned well and collapsed, foaming at the mouth. So many ways for someone to die, impaled and snakebitten and bled out over the course of days. So many ways to make it so living was worse.

A baby griffin pushing its weaker sibling out of the nest. A cat torturing a mouse, letting it go just to catch it again. A dragon turning her bright amber eyes to the new disturbance in her territory, spreading her wings and leaping and-

Remus doubled over and retched, coughing out a few bloody pieces of lung, and Patton yelped. "Incoming," Remus said when he straightened up, because he was nice like that, and the Dragon Witch hit the ground like a torpedo.

The force of the impact knocked Roman off his feet; Virgil yanked him up and crowded the other Sides back, snarling like a pissed-off mutant kitten. The Witch didn't spare him a second glance.

Her scales were darker and bloodier than ever, wings torn and newly scarred. She felt solid, though, like a weight on the world, and  _ that _ was weird as shit. She should have felt like a part of it. 

"Duke," she said, raising her wings in threat. Remus idly wondered how she'd noticed him watching and twirled his morningstar, savoring the fear in the air. It tasted like Everclear. "How surprising! I could have  _ sworn  _ you were in great peril."

"Peril  _ balls,"  _ Remus said, and the Dragon Witch snarled. "What're you here for, Dragon Bitch? Wanna beat the shit outta Roman again?"

"Of course not," she purred, and Remus heard his brother's breath catch. "The  _ prince _ has safe passage. Your new companions, on the other hand-"

Virgil snarled, "You're not touching them."

"Aren't I? They're trespassing. I'd be well within my rights to rip them to pieces." The Witch cocked her head. "I've always heard that Morality cries easily, but I'd love to see it for myself. He seems like such a succulent treat."

"I'd really prefer that you leave us  _ aloe _ -ne, actually," Patton snapped, stepping in front of Roman and holding out an arm so he didn't rush forward. Virgil darted forward to flank him, vibrating with nerves. "I don't want my kiddos to have to deal with a jerk like you. Why can't you just fly off somewhere else?"

"How unexpected, it speaks!" the Witch exclaimed, lowering her head for a closer look. Patton met her gaze and trembled. "What makes you think I care what you think, Morality? You're so boring. Positively prosaic, in my studied opinion." Her jaws parted, and Virgil lunged forward and snarled, putting himself in the way. "No, I'm sad to say that you're not very interesting, either. We've already fought, after all."

"We have more important tasks to complete than decoding the speech of a glorified function," Logan gritted out. "If you will not state your purpose for waylaying us-"

"Oh, but I do have a purpose! I'm here to issue a challenge." The Dragon Witch cocked her head, something bright and calculating suffusing her gaze. "What do you say, Duke? One life for two?"

The wording sent the octopus writhing, pushing new ideas toward the surface like bobbing severed heads. The Witch was acting off, confrontational and confident where she should've tucked tail and run as soon as she noticed Roman and Remus working together. She was acting like she knew something they didn't. Curiosity fizzled in Remus's chest and blocked his bloodstream, causing clots that traveled to his brain and made him taste colors before he collapsed- or rather that was what they would've done, if he wasn't busy. Instead he kept standing, boringly, and tilted his head. 

"Do not," Virgil snapped, but Remus was already talking.

"Y'know what, sure! Let's do what Roman did. One fight for a few lives."

"One fight," the Dragon Witch agreed, drawing back. Remus recognized it for getting her eyes out of range, giving her room to blow fire, and tightened his grip on his weapon.

"Get the fuck out of our way," Remus said lightly, tensed for Virgil to yank everyone else back. Then the Witch lunged, thousands of pounds of force snapping towards him with flaming jaws, and it was  _ go time. _

The Dragon Witch might have been stronger and faster and able to breathe fire, but she had a few key weaknesses: she needed range to make her fire work right so it wouldn't get blocked by her body, she was weak at the wing membranes, and she always wanted to be the best, most dramatic villain in the room, which was tough because Remus had gotten there first.

Roman couldn't wrap his head around fighting dirty- his skull didn't bend that way- but Remus had been born to go for the crotch and other soft bits. He twisted to turn the Witch's blow into a graze and dove into her reach, swinging his mace up into the chinks in her belly armor. The dragon roared and slammed down her claws, but he undulated out of the way, went for the same weak spot again before she drove him off. The wings were next, thinner scales and skin where a harsh blow could tear right through, but Remus didn't get the chance to bash more than one hole; the Dragon Witch slammed him into the ground and bathed her own claw in fire, searing Remus's skin to a nice crackling crisp.

Human barbecue! That definitely would've been enough to kill Roman, the wimp. Too bad Remus was made of stronger stuff. He writhed against the flames and lengthened his teeth to chomp at the tender flesh between her claws. The Witch let go and he rolled away, shooting to his feet with all his skin sloughing off black from the heat. "That all you got?" Remus goaded, and the dragon slammed her tail into his side, sending him skidding across the grass. His nerves sang like agonized popcorn. "I'd get hurt worse getting a blowjob from a grandma who kept in her dentures! C'mon, Bitchy Witchy, you can't let Ethel from church beat you-"

He ducked under the next blow and spun, tossing his morningstar into the dragon's jaws like a rock from a slingshot. Remus's version of David was a lot hotter than the Biblical one, though, literally; he saw the Witch jerk back and choke and summoned Roman's sword to go after her eyes, slicing at all the delicate parts he could find and charging right through her flames.

The fight went on like that for a while, the Dragon Witch getting more and more bloody and Remus dropping body parts like a lobster shedding exoskeletons. The Witch's lips drew back, quips coming slower and slower; finally she snarled, "Enough of this," and flashed forward  _ too  _ fast, as fast as teleportation, as  _ sinking out- _

Her claws tore Remus in half. Worse- or really just weirder, since worse was subjective and hey, new experience- they tore through  _ him, Creativity, lust-gore-monsters,  _ and split him in a hundred pieces like light through an eighth-dimensional prism. The Imagination split and melted, faces blurring into atoms into screaming into  _ soundsmelltastefeel,  _ and Remus was in the ground and behind it and above them all, above everything, staring down at Thomas lying in bed asleep-

And shuddered back together, rubber band snapping back and octopus sagging out of his mouth. The creature squirmed under his collar and turned reddish-black, mingling with the blood spatter from Remus's hanging intestines; the rest of him was just below, loose and mangled, not even twitching. Remus could've reached out and touched his pelvic bone if he'd wanted.

He didn't, though. The pieces of him were still settling into place, coral polyps sinking back into the fold, and moving felt like anathema. Remus could lie quiet for once instead, let curiosity, confidence, and sadism slither back beside horniness and inspiration _ .  _ Let the twin impulses to destroy and create meld back together like he and Roman never would. Let the blood from his intestines congeal on the ground.

Creativity slapped his ear with a thin, slimy tentacle. Remus tasted his own sweat through his cephalopod sensory organs. Sexy.

Slowly, he noticed the buzzing in his ears was screaming, and that the screaming wasn't coming from him.

_ "Remus!  _ ** _Remus!"_ **

The Dragon Witch stalked closer. Remus could have reacted, maybe, could've blinked or shivered his eyelashes or whatever, but playing the corpse was the better choice.  _ Remus _ knew that he could put himself back together, but he doubted the Dragon Bitch knew that. She'd even said at the beginning:  _ one life, for two.  _ She'd wanted him actually dead.

Remus was so proud of her. Too bad she'd have to die if she tried that shit on Roman.

A claw scooped him up, trailing intestines from his slashed-through stomach like party streamers. The octopus cowered under Remus's shirt, and he felt secondhand how he must've felt to the dragon: rage and sorrow and hatred of the world all mishmashed, a glass sculpture smashed to tiny useless fragments. Without the creative part of him, he tasted like nothing. Like not a Side at all.

The Dragon Witch rumbled, so close to his face he could smell her rotting breath, "I always preferred having only one of you, anyway."

No reaction. She took Remus's legs into her jaws and tipped her head back like a bird, swallowing them whole, and the octopus tightened its hold on Remus's neck. He'd have a hell of a time fighting his way out of the Witch's stomach with only half of him in working order. Probably it'd be a nice challenge. Maybe she'd eaten Dee and he was dead for real, maybe Janus had gone into the Subconscious after him and came back out in her lair and got torn apart in little pieces, a hand an arm a shoulder popped off him like he was a PEZ dispenser and  _ fuck _ , how he'd scream-

"Dragon Witch," came an unexpectedly geeky voice, oddly unsteady. Remus couldn't muster up the will to raise his head just yet, but he strained his ears and heard the dragon huff as she leaned in close, blowing burning air over Logan's body. "That's enough. You've made your point."

Nerdy Wolverine didn't sound so good. Had someone forgotten to charge him the night before?

"I've done more than that," the Dragon Witch purred. "But I'd love to know I've finished the job. That was the deal, after all."

"He agreed to a fight," Logan said, and somewhere close by there was a muffled scream, the sound of a scuffle. Someone was whimpering out strange, quiet cries, like a puppy abandoned outdoors to die of frostbite. "The fight was concluded. As such, you should  _ leave." _

The octopus caressed Remus's face, and the part of him that was still in his body finally stopped lagging and identified the tone of Logan's voice as anger. As pure, unadulterated rage. The thought thrilled through him. If he'd still had a dick he would've gotten a hard-on.

"But can I really be so sure he's dead?" the Dragon Witch asked, infuriatingly satisfied. "This one's quite the cockroach, most of the time. I had reservations about making him the test subject."

"Test subject," Logan repeated, and the Dragon Witch snarled.

"I'm growing tired of your interference, Logic. Step out of the way."

"Why?" Logan asked bitterly. There was a glitch in the air, hot turning cold turning lukewarm-humid, grass going plastic and dying away beneath Remus's seeping carcass. Existence thinned, turned to stageplay. The Imagination went cellophane. "Can't you feel it? He isn't there. Dark Creativity  _ isn't there.  _ You've done enough damage as it is."

"Step away," the Dragon Witch hissed, and someone choked back a scream. Remus, stuck staring at the sky, couldn't tell whether it'd been Patton or Virgil.

What would happen if the Dragon Witch pulled Logan apart like she'd tried to do to Remus? Would he collapse into post-its and staplers? Would he go still and pale like Snow White's corpse, break into bloody bits like a body put through a giant paper shredder, overheat and melt down like a nuclear reactor? Would his death have a blast radius? Would it take Thomas with it?

"No," said Logan, simply. "What do you mean by test subject?"

"Logan," someone choked, and Remus recognized  _ this  _ voice well enough. That was Virgil, scared out of his mind and high on adrenaline, so far gone he was in the stratosphere. Probably the only thing holding him back from charging in was how that'd leave Patton and Roman open to attack."L, c'mon, please-"

"Do you intend to kill anyone else?" Logan persevered, voice shaking, and the Witch growled, low and dark as thunder.

"That depends," she snarled, "on how quickly you move out of the way."

Remus reached out with one of his intestines and brushed Logan's ankle, the teensiest twitch of movement. Logan shuddered- Remus felt him shudder- and said, "Judging from your answer, I think I'll make the assumption that you chose the Duke specifically because there are two Creativities. That whatever you're doing requires Remus out of the way, and thus has something to do with Deceit as well. That you need Thomas, just as the rest of us do, and so cannot risk killing any of the Sides left. Is that correct?"

The Dragon Witch slammed a claw into Logan's side, making Patton scream- but her massive arm stopped mid-blow. Logan had caught it in one nerdy hand. "Not that it matters," he said, all angles and sharp lines, too pointed for dreams to take hold. "Whatever weapons you developed for use on Remus and Deceit could never have had the same effect on me. You see,  _ figment,"  _ and the Witch huffed out a breath, quivering, jerking back- "I don't deal in idle musings. My role is function alone, and I cannot be destroyed." The claw cracked, keratin falling to the ground in shattered clumps. Logan was chrome and steel. "That would be illogical."

The dragon yanked herself out of his grip, raising her bloodied wings in threat. Remus, watching through the octopus's camouflaged eyes, saw it as a blur of color. "Such an ego! I thought that was the  _ prince's _ job. You should leave him something to his name, since he couldn't even manage to protect his own brother."

Roman made a wounded sound at that, possibly the worst thing Remus had ever heard. "Leave," Logan snarled, world going stark and cold, and the Witch disappeared in a flurry of wind.

Logan knelt at Remus's side once she was gone and pulled the octopus loose, letting it feel his fingers before he placed it at Remus's throat. Remus pushed himself to blink and found to his surprise that he could sit up; the next moment there were arms around his shoulders, a familiar repellent weight against his chest. "Remus," Roman gasped, so close to a sob it lived next door, "Remus, brother, I thought you were dead, how dare you make me think you were  _ dead-" _

"Hey, don't blame me, I thought I was dead, too," Remus said. Roman loosened his grip, sitting back to stare him in the face, and Remus patted his head. "Look, my legs are already growing back! Think I'll get a baby penis like in Deadpool?"

"Gods, I hope not," Roman choked out, trying to smile, and Patton charged in to give Remus his own hug, burying his face in his shoulder.

Remus froze- when was the last time Morality had even touched him?- and Patton said, "I'm so glad you aren't dead, I thought you were, I really did-"

"Don't do that again," Virgil spat, crouching to look him over, and Logan waved him away, nudging Patton and Roman back as well.

The Light Sides scrambled back, giving him space, and Logic asked, "Are you unable to re-synthesize your Creativity with the rest of your components?"

"Yeah," Remus said, feeling the octopus plop an arm against his mustache. His shirt had smoldered off completely by that point, leaving his chest bare. Now  _ that _ was classic fantasy. "Just don't feel like it. See, I'm getting kind of sick of this shit."

"That makes two of us," Virgil managed, still staring at him with wide, watchful eyes.

"Right," Remus said, and pushed the octopus into Roman's hands.

Roman froze, blood draining from his face. "Remus," he breathed, sick and horrified, and Remus  _ felt _ that he was-could feel the bright spontaneity of Roman reach through his brother's palms and intertwine with his, grasping and claiming. So much of them wanted to be one again. Remus was handing his creativity over on a silver platter.

A vise closed on Remus's chest, which didn't make sense because if anything the blood loss should've brought his blood pressure down. Roman swallowed, throat bobbing, and asked, weaker, "What are you  _ doing?"  _ The other Sides had gone horribly silent around them, Virgil white as a ghost.

"Dunno yet!" Remus said, only half true. "I'm just doing it.  _ Take _ it, brother mine."

"That's  _ Creativity _ ," Roman rasped. "It's- it's  _ yours-" _

"Yours, too," Remus pushed, because he had to  _ get _ this, if nothing else Roman had to  _ understand _ . "Isn't it?  _ Take it _ . And later you can give it back."

"Remus, if- if I didn't give it back-"

"I'm going back to the cave," Remus snarled, on his feet, as the malformed flesh of his legs molded back into shape. "And I can't take it with me, so I'm leaving it with you. It's not a hard concept, Princess Bubbledumb. I've got shit to do and too much of me to do it."

"You almost died just now," Patton blurted. "At least take a break before you leave!"

"Or take someone with you," Virgil said, and Remus rolled his eyes.

"No can do, Gothman Prophecies! This is a solo mission." Remus was the only one the Dragon Witch thought was dead, anyway. If anyone was gonna find Janus under cover of nonexistence, it'd be him.

"Very well," Logan said, fielding Virgil's scowl with equanimity. "In that case, if you're certain, Patton and I will be returning to the apartment. But first-"

"My dream," Patton blurted, wiping his eyes. "I, um. There's something I forgot to mention."

"Spit it out already," Remus said, vibrating with impatience. "What'd you forget?"

"Something important, I think," Patton admitted, hugging his arms. "It was- in the dream, when we had the tea party, Deceit's eyes were clear. Even when the rest of him got all fuzzy, I could always see his eyes."

"Get to the point, Patatouille," Remus hissed, and Patton's gaze snapped up to meet his.

"His eyes were amber," Patton said, soft.  The universe doused itself in red.

Amber, like gemstones and oleander honey, tropical fungi and low flames. Like dragon's eyes. Like the _Witch's_ eyes as she sunk in claws and tore, as she forced them apart and targeted them and gave Janus a limp and she dared she _dared_ she **_fucking dared_**\- 

"Remus, _wait_," Roman begged, but it was too little, too late. 

Remus was gone before his brother could stop him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: blood and gore, being eaten, Remus-typical language and thought processes, near-death experiences


End file.
